. Should I do it if I did not?'

'Are we to be estranged, Mama?' asked Florence, gazing at her like one
frightened.

Edith's silent lips formed 'Yes.'

Florence looked at her with increasing fear and wonder, until she could
see her no more through the blinding tears that ran down her face.

'Florence! my life!' said Edith, hurriedly, 'listen to me. I cannot
bear to see this grief. Be calmer. You see that I am composed, and is it
nothing to me?'

She resumed her steady voice and manner as she said the latter words,
and added presently:

'Not wholly estranged. Partially: and only that, in appearance,
Florence, for in my own breast I am still the same to you, and ever will
be. But what I do is not done for myself.'

'Is it for me, Mama?' asked Florence.

'It is enough,' said Edith, after a pause, 'to know what it is; why,
matters little. Dear Florence, it is better--it is necessary--it must
be--that our association should be less frequent. The confidence there
has been between us must be broken off.'

'When?' cried Florence. 'Oh, Mama, when?'

'Now,' said Edith.

'For all time to come?' asked Florence.

'I do not say that,' answered Edith. 'I do not know that. Nor will I
say that companionship between us is, at the best, an ill-assorted and
unholy union, of which I might have known no good could come. My way
here has been through paths that you will never tread, and my way
henceforth may lie--God knows--I do not see it--'

Her voice died away into silence; and she sat, looking at Florence,
and almost shrinking from her, with the same strange dread and wild
avoidance that Florence had noticed once before. The same dark pride and
rage succeeded, sweeping over her form and features like an angry chord
across the strings of a wild harp. But no softness or humility ensued on
that. She did not lay her head down now, and weep, and say that she
had no hope but in Florence. She held it up as if she were a beautiful
Medusa, looking on him, face to face, to strike him dead. Yes, and she
would have done it, if she had had the charm.

'Mama,' said Florence, anxiously, 'there is a change in you, in more
than what you say to me, which alarms me. Let me stay with you a
little.'

'No,' said Edith, 'no, dearest. I am best left alone now, and I do best
to keep apart from you, of all else. Ask me no questions, but believe
that what I am when I seem fickle or capricious to you, I am not of my
own will, or for myself. Believ