"Sorry!" softly echoed Mrs. Lee, uncoiling herself from one peculiar
pose on the yellow-and-black lounge where she was seated, and gently
writhing into another. "Of course I am sorry, Cornelia. Although you
must grant that _she_ merits it. To desert her poor, ignorant, miserable
mother! To run away and leave her own flesh and blood in starvation!"
Here Mrs. Lee heaved an immense sigh. "Ah, Providence finds us all out,
sooner or later! If that wicked woman's sin is punished by her husband's
ruin, who shall say that she has not richly deserved it? But in spite of
this, Cornelia dear, _our_ stroke of punishment will not be too severe.
With regard to my own share in our coming work, I feel that I am to be
merely the instrument--the humble instrument--of Heavenly justice
itself!"
"No doubt," replied Mrs. Van Horn, with frigid dryness. "But you must do
it all alone to-morrow, Sylvia. I have come to tell you so. I can have
no part whatever in the proceeding. However it is carried out--whether
you bring Mrs. Hollister face to face with her plebeian parent or no, I
shall be absent. It is true, I accepted for the lunch. But I shall be
ill at the last moment. I withdraw from the whole ingenious plot. I
shan't see the little _coup de theatre_ at all. I wish that I could. You
know I have never forgiven the refusal of Beverley any more than you
have forgiven ... well, something else, my dear Sylvia. But I must
remain aloof; it is settled; there is no help for it."
Mrs. Lee opened her big black eyes very wide indeed. "Have you lost your
senses, Cornelia?" she queried, with her grotesque, unfailing drawl.
"What! After my wonderful meeting with Mrs. Twining at the hospital!
After your exultant conclusion that we had far better fix the stigma of
ingratitude and desertion upon her shameless daughter with as much
publicity as possible! After our talks, our arrangements, our
anticipations! After all this, you are _not going to-morrow_! I don't
understand. I am sure that I must be dreaming!"
"Let me explain, then," said Mrs. Van Horn, with a quiver in her usually
serene tones that was a residue of last evening's dramatic defeat and
surrender. "For once in my life, Sylvia, I--I have found my match, I
have failed to hold my own, I have been ignominiously beaten. And the
victor is my own brother, Beverley."
She went on speaking for some time longer, with no actual interruption
on the part of her companion, though with very decided signs of
consternation and disapproval.
"Oh, Cornelia, it is too bad!" exclaimed Mrs. Lee, when the recital was
finished. "He couldn't have meant that he would cut his own sister! What
_is_ to be done? Well, I suppose it must all be given up. And it would
have been such a triumph! And she deserves it so--running away from her
own mother whom she had always hated and disobeyed! We have that poor,
horrid, common, but pitiable Mrs. Twining's own word for it, you know.
And she would have been such a magnificent spectre at the banquet! She
would have risen up like Banquo, ill-dressed, haggard, rheumatic,
pathetic. Everybody would have denounced this unnatural daughter when
they saw the meeting. I can't realize that you, _you_ could let it all
be nipped in the bud!"
"It isn't all nipped in the bud, Sylvia," said Mrs. Van Horn, sharply.
"But it _is_! Why isn't it? You certainly don't expect me to carry it
out alone?"
Mrs. Van Horn decisively nodded. "Yes, Sylvia," she answered, "that is
just the point. I do expect you to carry it out alone. You are clever
enough, quite clever enough, and" ... Here the speaker paused for a
moment, and then crisply, emphatically added: "And after all is said,
remember one thing. It is this: You have a much larger debt to pay her
than I have."
A malign look stole into Mrs. Lee's black eyes. She was thinking of
Stuart Goldwin. She was thinking of the man whom she had passionately
loved--whom she passionately loved still.
"I believe you are right, Cornelia," she at length replied, in her usual
protracted and lingering style. She had got herself, as she spoke, into
one of her most involved and tortuous attitudes; she had never looked
more serpentine than now.