“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 house, fancying she saw me, and was singing to me, and I used to listen nights and think I heard her grand voice as it rose and fell, and the people cheering, and she so beautiful standing there for the crowd to gaze at, and wishing she could get away from it all.

“At last her letters ceased and father wrote that her mind had given way suddenly;—­that she was a raving maniac,—­dangerous, I think he said,—­and I thought of the way she looked at him once when I was a child, and he told me to ask her about her father.  He said she was in Dr. Haynes’s private asylum, where she had the kindest of care.  I think I died many deaths in one when I heard that.  I wrote her again and again, and wanted to go to her, but my father forbade it.  No one saw her, he said, except her attendant and the physician,—­not even himself, as the sight of him threw her into paroxysms.  I didn’t wonder at that.  He sent my letters back, telling me she would not sense them, and they would excite her if she did.  Her only chance of recovery was in her being kept perfectly quiet, with nothing to remind her of the past.

“A few months ago he died suddenly in Santa Barbara.  One of the troupe wrote to grandma, and, as I told you, I did not cry; I couldn’t.  I was too anxious about mother, and wrote at once to Dr. Haynes, but received no answer.  I waited a while and wrote again, with the same result.  Then I remembered Dr. Alling, who had attended me for some slight ailment, and wrote to him, with the result you know.  Some one has taken my mother away.  Who was it, and where is she?  I feel as if I were going mad when I think of the possibilities.”