It was she who had the portrait of you painted
which is downstairs."
Ida took up a picture of the Miss Ludington of twenty-six or seven.
"Tell me something about her," she said. "What kind of a person was she?"
The elder woman's manner, when she saw what picture it was that Ida had
taken up, betrayed a marked embarrassment, and first she made no reply.
Noticing her confusion and hesitation, Ida said, softly, "Don't tell me
if it is anything you don't like to speak of. I do not care to know it."
"I will tell you," replied Miss Ludington, with determination. "You have
as good a right to know as I have. She cannot blame me for telling you.
She knows your secrets as I do, and you have a right to know hers. She
had a little escapade. You must not be too hard on her. It was the
outcome of the desperate dulness and life-weariness that came over her
with the knowledge that youth and its joys were past, leaving nothing in
their place. The calm and resignation to a lonely existence, empty of all
that human hearts desire, which came in after-years, she could not yet
command.
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