Nita was gone on a professional engagement into the country for a
week. According to what she had told her sister, Demetrius and Janet
were passionately attached, and his manner was only too endearing;
but Miss Ray had disliked the subject so much that she had avoided it
in a way she now regretted.
"Everything I have done has turned out wrong," she said with tears
running down her cheeks. "Even this! I would give anything to be
able to tell you of poor Janet, and yet I thought my silence was for
the best, for Nita and I could not mention her without quarrelling as
we had never done before. O, Mrs. Brownlow, I can't think how you
have ever forgiven me."
"I can forgive every one but myself," said Caroline sadly. "If I had
understood how to be a better mother, this would never have been."
"You! the most affectionate and devoted."
"Ah! but I see now it was only human love without the true moving
spring, and so my poor child grew up without it, and these are the
fruits."
"But my dear, my dear, one can't _give_ these things. Poor Janet
always was a headstrong girl, like my poor Nita. I know what you
mean, and how one feels that if one had been better oneself," said
poor Miss Ray, ending in utter entanglement, but tender sympathy.
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