Such is love Read Online Free PDF Page B

fact agitated Aunt Eleanor very much. Why? And you were reassuring her with the statement that I was ignorant of any significance it had for me. Why?"
    "You are imagining things," Mrs. Vilner said coldly.

    "And you are lying," Gwyneth retorted brutally, "Aunt Eleanor, will you speak to me? I am asking you. You're more afraid of lying than Mother is. You must tell me the truth."
    "Gwyneth—^reaUy, my dear—it's quite absurd—and you're being extremely rude to your mother."
    "Rude!" Gwyneth laughed rather harshly. "Rude! What does that matter at a moment like this?" She came slowly forward into the room, her eyes never leaving her aunt's agitated face. "Never mind about the orphanage, then. I want you. to answer another question instead. It's simpler and it's much more vital. Did my baby really—die, or was that just another of Mother's lies?"
    "Really, Gwyneth, I never heard such—Sandra "
    Aunt Eleanor^s eyes sought those of her sister-in-law almost imploringly.
    "No, don't ask Mother's " assistance. Just answer my question. Yes or no?" Gwyneth knew that her aunt could keep a secret so long as she was not questioned, but she genuinely quailed before a flat lie.
    Behind her, she could almost feel her mother's cold anger, but she refused to be intimidated. She simply stared at her aujnt and repeated quite gently:
    "Did my baby die—or is he still alive?—at Greystones, perhaps?"
    "Gwyneth—it's most terribly unfortunate—so much better that you should never know—all over years ago
    really. You must just think of him as dead, child "
    Aunt Eleanor's voice stammered into silence.
    Gwyneth took no more notice of her. She swung round to face her mother, who still leant back in her chair, regarding the scene with a slight smile which concealed her lury.
    "You hateful, wicked woman," Gwyneth said slowly. "So you settled all that, and then covered your tracks by lying to me when I was too ill to do anything but beUeve you."
    Her mother remained unmoved, though Aunt Eleanor's gasp showed the measure of her horrors at such words being addressed to a parent.
    "Don't be absurd, my dear." Mrs. Vilner kept her voice quite low, just as Gwyneth herself did. "Why behave like

    someone in East Lynn? And still more, why blame me? I did what was much the best thing for us all, at a time when you were certainly not in a fit state to make your own decisions."
    "You lied to me." Again Gwyneth's voice sounded almost harsh.
    "And why not? Would you have been any happier during the last five years if you had known the truth?"
    "I had a right to know the truth and judge for myself."
    "You had judged, Gwyneth. You had consented to what I did, in the months before the child was born. Do you suppose I was going to have all our careful arrangements shattered for the sake of an hysterical outburst of sentiment? You were too ill to reason clearly. You simply didn't know at that time what was best, or what was absolutely impossible."
    "The—the baby's coming changed that."
    "Oh no. I'm no beUever in these last-minute miracles of mother-love," Mrs. Vilner retorted with a slight curl of her lip. "The baby's coming changed nothing. Exposure would still have ruined your future, put your father in an unbearable position, meant endless unpleasantness for me, and done very little—if anything—for the child. None of that was changed at all. The only thing which had changed was your attitude. Sentiment got the better of common sense. So, for your own sake, if nothing else, I had to make this decision for you. And I maintain you have been happier for it. You have been able to build your life again because of it."
    "How plausible you make it all sound," Gwyneth exclaimed bitterly. "But it doesn't really alter anything."
    She looked at her mother with an expression of baffled dislike that was naked in its frankness. Most women would have quailed before such a glance from a daughter, but Mrs. Vilner never flinched.
    "Well, my dear, the justification of my