"That is why."

Mathilde was frightened not only by the intense bitterness of her
mother's tone, but also by the obvious fact that she was face to face
with the explanation of the separation of her parents. She had been only
nine years old at the time. She had loved her father, had found him a
better playfellow than her mother, had wept bitterly at parting with him,
and had missed him. And then gradually her mother, who had before seemed
like a beautiful, but remote, princess, had begun to make of her an
intimate and grown-up friend, to consult her and read with her and
arrange happinesses in her life, to win, to, if the truth must be told,
reconquer her. Perhaps even Adelaide would not have succeeded so easily
in effacing Severance's image had not he himself so quickly remarried.
Mathilde went several times to stay with the new household after Adelaide
in secret, tearful conference with her father had been forced to consent.

To Mathilde these visits had been an unacknowledged torture. She never
knew quite what to mention and what to leave untouched. There was always
a constraint between the three of them. Her father, when alone with her,
would question her, with strange, eager pauses, as to how her mother
looked. Her mother's successor, whom she could not really like, would
question her more searchingly, more embarrassingly, with an ill-concealed
note of jealousy in every word. Even at twelve years Mathilde was shocked
by the strain of hatred in her father's new wife, who seemed to reproach
her for fashion and fineness and fastidiousness, qualities of which the
girl was utterly unaware. She could have loved her little half-brother
when he appeared upon the scene, but Mrs. Severance did not encourage the
bond, and gradually Mathilde's visits to her father ceased.

As a child she had been curious about the reasons for the parting, but as