So Mrs. Roberts went on, quite fairly under way in her usual course of argument, and rousing all her faculties for this last struggle.  She was as convinced as ever of the completeness of her own views, and of the effect which they must have upon Helen; perhaps it was not her fault that she did not know to what another person she was talking.

In truth, it would not be easy to tell how great a difference there was in the effect of those old arguments upon Helen; while she had been sitting in her room alone and suffering so very keenly, the girl had been, though she did not know it, very near indeed to the sacred truths of life, and now as she listened to her aunt, she was simply holding her breath.  The climax came suddenly, for as the other stopped, Helen leaned forward in her chair, and gazing deep into her eyes asked her, “Aunt Polly, can it really be that you do not know that what you have been saying to me is dreadfully wicked?”

There was perhaps nothing that the girl could have done to take her complacent relative more by surprise; Mrs. Roberts sat for a moment, echoing the last word, and staring as if not quite able to realize what Helen meant.  As the truth came to her she turned quite pale.

“It seems to me,” she said with a sneer, “that I remember a time when it didn’t seem quite so wicked to you.  If I am not mistaken you were quite glad to do all that I told you, and to get as much as ever you could.”

Helen was quite used to that taunt in her own heart, and to the pain that it brought her, so she only lowered her eyes and said nothing.  In the meantime Mrs. Roberts was going on in her sarcastic tone: 

“Wicked indeed!” she ejaculated, “and I suppose all that I have been doing for you was wicked too!  I suppose it was wicked of me to watch over your education all these years as I have, and to plan your future as if you were my own child, so that you might amount to something in the world; and it was wicked of me to take all the trouble that I have for your happiness, and wicked of Mr. Roberts to go to all the trouble about the trousseau that he has!  The only right and virtuous thing about it all is the conduct of our niece who causes us to do it all, and who promises herself to a man and lets him go to all the trouble that he has, and then gets her head full of sanctimonious notions and begins to preach about wickedness to her elders!”

Helen had nothing to reply to those bitter words, for it was only too easy just then to make her accuse herself of anything.  She sat meekly suffering, and thinking that the other was quite justified in all her anger.  Mrs. Roberts was, of course, quite incapable of appreciating her mood, and continued to pour out her sarcasm, and to grow more and more bitter.  To tell the truth, the worthy matron had not been half so unselfish in her hopes about Helen as she liked to pretend, and she showed then that like most people of the world who are perfectly good-natured on the surface, she could display no little ugliness when thwarted in her ambitions and offended in her pride.