Read "The Mother's Recompense" by Edith Wharton online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
After all, she was not going to be able to question Anne about Lilla. / As she faced the situation the next day -- as she faced the new Chris in / her path -- Kate Clephane saw the impossibility of using him as a key to / her daughter's confidence. There was one thing much closer to her now / than any conceivable act of Chris's could ever be; and that was her own / relation to Anne. She simply could not talk to Anne about Chris -- not / yet. It was not that she regarded that episode in her life as a thing / to be in itself ashamed of. She was not going, even now, to deny or / disown it; she wanted only to deny and disown Chris. Quite conceivably, / she might have said to her daughter: "Yes, I loved once -- and the man I / loved was not your father. " But to say it about Chris! To see the slow / look of wonder in those inscrutable depths of Anne's eyes: a look that / said, not "I blame you", or even "I disapprove you", but, so much more / scathingly, just: "You, mother -- and _Chris_?"
Yes; that was it. It was necessary for her pride and dignity, for her / moral safety almost, that what people like Enid Drover would have / called her "past" should remain unidentified, unembodied -- or at least / not embodied in Chris Fenno. Yet to know -- to know!