Page:Possession (1926).pdf/291

 "Ah," said Lily. "You don't know your own daughter yet . . . Hattie. He helped her to escape."

But she knew that Hattie would never believe such a thing.

It was a strange circumstance that Lily—the Lily whom Hattie had always feared and distrusted—became in those days the one to whom the vigorous woman turned for comfort and companionship. Somehow the indolent Lily, so filled with understanding and knowledge of the world, served as a bond between the mother and the daughter in far off Paris. She succeeded in softening all the wounds made by Ellen in the abrupt notes which came with an efficient regularity, for Lily possessed a great power in such matters; it was a power which had more to do with the sound of her warm, low voice than with any logic in the arguments she used. Her arguments were neither logical nor profound; usually they were only observations as to the shyness of Ellen in all the range of affection, and the fierce ambition that tormented her.

"You will understand some day," she said, "that all she is doing is more for you than for herself. It is because she wants you to be proud of her."

"I don't care about that . . ." Hattie would say over and over again. "Not very much. But I don't want her to escape me forever. I couldn't bear that. She's different from Fergus. He is warm and shows his love. But there are times when I'm afraid I'll lose Ellen forever."

And Lily, in the depths of her placid mysterious soul, knew that here again it was a matter of possession. . . the same possession which the Baron must always have over herself, the possession which Ellen, without willing it, had exercised over poor Clarence. Hattie would not abandon her claim to her children. She could not say to Hattie, without hurting her, that her daughter was a creature whom none had possessed or ever would possess even quietly, secretly, as Lily knew that she possessed the Baron, despite all his boisterous show of domination.