The Web of Fate

Joan had looked forward to her aunt's coming with very mixed feelings. There were moments when she was frankly glad at the prospect of a companionship which had been hers since her earliest childhood. Her nature had no malice in it, and the undoubted care, which, in her early years, the strange old woman had bestowed upon her counted for much in her understanding of duty and gratitude. Then, besides, whatever Aunt Mercy's outlook, whatever the unwholesomeness of the profession she followed with fanatical adherence, she was used to her, used to her strangenesses, her dark moments. If affection had never been particularly apparent in the elder woman's attitude toward her, there had certainly been a uniform avoidance of the display of any other feeling until those last few days immediately preceding her own flight from St. Ellis. Habit was strong with Joan, so strong, indeed, that in her happy moments she was glad at the thought of the return into her life of the woman who had taken the place of her dead parents.

Then, too, even the memory of that frenzied morning, when Aunt Mercy, laboring under her awful disease of mysticism, had assumed the rôle of prophetess, and accuser, and hurled at her troubled head a denunciation as cruel as it was impossible, had lost something of its dread significance and sting. At the time it had been of a blasting nature, but now--now, since she had conferred with Buck's great friend, since Buck's wonderful support had been added to her life, all the harshness of the past appeared in a new and mellowed light. She believed she saw her aunt as she really was, a poor, torn creature, whose mind was diseased, as a result of those early fires of disappointment through which she had passed.