I'm afraid my act will only make him do worse; but I can't
help it."
To her mother she wrote merely, "Good-by. Think of me as well as
you can till I am forgotten."
Her thoughts of her mother were very bitter, for she felt that she
had been neglected as a child, and permitted to grow up so faulty
and superficial that she repelled the man her beauty might have
aided her in winning; and it was chiefly through her mother that
her last bitter and unendurable humiliation had come.
Mrs. Mayhew bustled in from her drive with Stanton, just before
dinner, and commenced volubly:
"Glad to see you up and looking so much better." (Ida knew she
was almost ghastly pale from the effects of the opiate and her
distress, but she recognized her mother's tactics.) "Come now, go
down with me and make a good dinner; then a drive this afternoon,
to which Ik has invited you, and you will look like your old
beautiful self."
"I do not wish to look like my old self," said Ida coldly.
"Who in the world ever looked better?"
"Every one who had a cultivated mind and a clear conscience."
"I declare, Ida, you've changed so since you came to the country
that I can't understand you at all.
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