Page:Possession (1926).pdf/40

 Ellen smiled in her silent, proud way. "I'm not deaf, Mama, nor blind. . . . I've been about the house now for nearly nineteen years. I know about Gramp Tolliver."

Again Ellen was smitten by amazement at her mother's ignorance of how much she knew, at how little the older woman understood of the shrewd knowledge she had hoarded away.

"I'm sorry you know it," said Mrs. Tolliver. "It would have been just as well if you hadn't known." Again she nodded her head with that same air of reaching a secret decision. "But now that you know it, you might as well know some other things. . . . You're old enough now, I guess." She sat down on one of the stiff-backed chairs and beckoned to her daughter. "Come here," she said, "and sit on my lap. . . . I'll tell you other things."

Ellen came to her and sat upon her lap, rather awkwardly, for to her it seemed a silly thing. She had not the faintest understanding of all that this small gesture meant to her mother. And secretly she hardened herself against a treacherous attack upon her affections. It was the habit of her mother to attack her through love. Always it had been a sure method of reducing Ellen's fortress of secrecy and hardness.

"It's about Lily," began Mrs. Tolliver. "I know Lily is beautiful. She's very kind and pleasant . . . but there are things about her that aren't nice. In some ways Lily is a loose woman. . . . She's laid herself open to talk. . . . People smirch her good name. . . . Perhaps she isn't really bad. . . . Nobody really knows anything against her, but she is free with men. . . . There's been talk, Ellen, and when there's smoke, there's fire."

Here Ellen interrupted her. "I don't believe it. . . . I don't believe any of it," she exclaimed stubbornly. "It's the way people talk. I know how they do. . . . I've heard. . . . It's one reason why I hate the Town."

And then Ellen saw her mother assume a great calmness, deliberately and with a certain ostentation, in order to impress Ellen with her sense of justice. It was like taking a cloak from a