oes it
mean? What does it mean?"

"What has happened? Who has been here?"

"Maria--sneering at Charles's ideas, asking me questions, petting me
and pitying me and making a baby of me, until I broke down at last
and wanted all the things she wanted to have done, and let her kiss me
good-bye for her kindness in doing them--"

In a passion of tears she walked up and down, up and down the room, as
her father does, except with that quick, nervous grace she always has,
and in a painful, sobbing excitement.

Every sense I had was for an instant's passage fused in one clear,
concentrated anger against a sister who could play so ruthlessly upon
my poor child's woman pulses and emotions, so disarm her of her
self-control and right free spirit.

"Why did she come?" I said, at last, with the best calmness I could
muster. Peggy stood still for a moment, startled by a coldness in my
voice I couldn't alter.

"She came to find out about things for herself. Then when she did find
out about Charles's way of helping us she simply hated it--and she sent
me after--after the letter you had. I got it from your desk, and Maria
took it to find out its real address."

At that she sank again in a chair, and buried her face in her hands,
hardly knowing what she was saying. "Oh, what shall I do? What shall I
do?" she repeated, softly and wildly. "Yesterday I could behave so well
by what I knew was true about him. Then, when Maria came and spoke
as though I was three years old, and hadn't any understanding nor any
dignity of my own, and the best thing for any girl, at any rate, were to
cling to the man she loved as though she were his mother and he were her
dear, erring child" (she began to laugh a little), "the feebler he were
the more credit to her for her devotion--then I couldn't go on by what I
knew was true about him--only back, back again to all my--old mistake."
She was laughing and crying now with little, quick gasps, in a sheer
hysteria which no doubt would have given her sister entire satisfaction
as a manifesto of her normal womanliness.

I brought her a glass of water, and, trying to conceal my own distress
for her as well as I could, sat down, silently, near her. Gradually
she grew quieter, until the room was so still that we could hear the
raindrops from the eaves plash down outside. Peggy pushed back her cloud
of bright hair and fastened it in the nape of her neck. At last she
said, with conviction: "Mother, Maria didn't sa