The Mother's Recompense by Edith Wharton — Read

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!