mother's love for me. When I heard he was dead, I could not feel badly,
as I ought, and did not cry. He was a very handsome man, and very nice
with people, who thought my mother a most fortunate woman to have so
polished and courteous a husband. They should have seen him as I saw him
at times, and heard him swear, as I have heard him, and call her names
till she was white as a corpse and fainted. I never saw her turn upon
him but once. I had asked her why she didn't leave him and go home, if
she had any to go to. That was when I was a little girl.

"'I have no home or friends in all the wide world to go to' she said,
and then, with a sneer which was maddening, it meant so much, my father
said, 'Ask her who her father was and see if she can tell you.'

"I didn't know then what he meant to insinuate, but mother did, and
there came a look into her eyes which frightened me, and her voice was
not mother's at all, as she walked straight up to him and said, 'How
dare you insult my mother!'

"She looked like an enraged animal, and my father must have been afraid
she would attack him, for he tried to soothe her and succeeded at last
in doing so. I think there was some mystery about her father and mother,
as she would never talk of them. Once I asked her about them, and she
said she hadn't any; and she looked so strange that I never asked her
again. I knew she was born South, that her people were poor, and her
name Harris, and that is all I know, except that no better or lovelier
woman ever lived, and if she is really crazy father made her so, and I
cannot feel any love for him, or respect. If I ever had any, and I
suppose I must have had, he killed it long ago. The first thing I
remember of him in Rome, where I was born, he was practising some music
with mother,--playing for her while she sang, and I was standing by him,
putting my hands on his arm and trying to hum the tune. With a jerk he
said to my nurse, 'Take her away and keep her away.'

"I am wicked, I know, to talk as I am doing, but it seems as if there
was a spell over me urging me to say things I never thought of saying.
It's a comfort to talk to some one who I know is my friend, and you are
so strong every way and have been so good to me."

She laid her head on Ruby's arm like a tired child, and continued, "I
wrote to mother very often after I came to Mayville, and she replied,
telling me how she missed me, and how she always fixed her eyes on some
part of the ho