This is
why you received me to-night as if I were a pestilence. This is
why I was treated at the table as if I were a death's head. This
is why your perfect friend looked towards me as if my chair
were vacant. He refused even to recognize the existence of such
a loathsome thing as my family explain to him that I am. Great
heaven! may I never live to receive a deeper humiliation than this!"
"But, Ida," cried Stanton, deeply alarmed and agitated by her manner,
"how else could we explain your action and your reckless words to
your mother?"
"Oh, I admit that circumstances are against me, but there is no
excuse for this outrage! I don't know what I did say to mother.
I've been too wretched and discouraged to remember. She IS my
mother, and I'll say nothing against her, though, heaven knows,
she has been a strange mother to me. Would to God I had a father
that I could go to, or a brother! But it seems I have not a friend
in the great, scornful world. Don't interrupt me. Words count
for nothing now, and mine least of all. If you were all ready to
believe me capable of what you have plainly intimated, you need
something stronger than words to convince you to the contrary.
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