Mathilde was frightened not only by the intense bitterness of her mother’s tone, but also by the obvious fact that she was face to face with the explanation of the separation of her parents.  She had been only nine years old at the time.  She had loved her father, had found him a better playfellow than her mother, had wept bitterly at parting with him, and had missed him.  And then gradually her mother, who had before seemed like a beautiful, but remote, princess, had begun to make of her an intimate and grown-up friend, to consult her and read with her and arrange happinesses in her life, to win, to, if the truth must be told, reconquer her.  Perhaps even Adelaide would not have succeeded so easily in effacing Severance’s image had not he himself so quickly remarried.  Mathilde went several times to stay with the new household after Adelaide in secret, tearful conference with her father had been forced to consent.

To Mathilde these visits had been an unacknowledged torture.  She never knew quite what to mention and what to leave untouched.  There was always a constraint between the three of them.  Her father, when alone with her, would question her, with strange, eager pauses, as to how her mother looked.  Her mother’s successor, whom she could not really like, would question her more searchingly, more embarrassingly, with an ill-concealed note of jealousy in every word.  Even at twelve years Mathilde was shocked by the strain of hatred in her father’s new wife, who seemed to reproach her for fashion and fineness and fastidiousness, qualities of which the girl was utterly unaware.  She could have loved her little half-brother when he appeared upon the scene, but Mrs. Severance did not encourage the bond, and gradually Mathilde’s visits to her father ceased.

As a child she had been curious about the reasons for the parting, but as she grew older it had seemed mere loyalty to accept the fact without asking why; she had perhaps not wanted to know why.  But now, she saw, she was to hear.

“Mathilde, do you still love your father?”

“I think I do, Mama.  I feel very sorry for him.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why.  I dare say he is happy.”

“I dare say he is, poor Joe.”  Adelaide paused.  “Well, my dear, that was the reason of our parting.  One can pity a son or a brother, but not a husband.  Weakness kills love.  A woman cannot be the leader, the guide, and keep any romance.  O Mathilde, I never want you to feel the humiliation of finding yourself stronger than the man you love.  That is why I left your father, and my justification is his present happiness.  This inferior little person he has married, she does as well.  Any one would have done as well.”

Mathilde was puzzled by her mother’s evident conviction that the explanation was complete.  She asked after a moment: 

“But what was it that made you think at first that you did love him, Mama?”