# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 126

On my trip from Chicago to Marion I went very carefully over the whole situation as it affected and might affect everybody concerned. I decided it was paramountly my problem, to solve for Elizabeth Ann, and, regardless of the shock which the revelation of my secret might cause, there did exist an obligation in the Harding family toward Elizabeth Ann, and I owed it to my child to apprise the Hardings of her true identity and parentage.
Of course, it would be difficult for me to tell Daisy Harding. It would mean for me the retracing of a word-for-word picture of that part of my life which I would fain recall only by sad-sweet memories unspoken, and the indelible imprint upon my character. Miss Harding's cordial, "Why, come right on out, Nan!" when I telephoned her from the Marion railroad station, brought me face to face with my promise to myself: that I would not postpone the telling, but have it over with.
I had scarcely seated myself when I said, "Miss Harding, I have something which I want you to know and I am going to proceed to tell you immediately."
I sat on the couch in the living-room. This was the first time I had been in Daisy Harding's new home since her marriage to Ralph Lewis. On the table stood a picture of my darling, taken with Laddie Boy, and it was the first time I had seen this particular picture of Mr. Harding. I looked closely at it when I sat down. Its presence bolstered me in the ordeal I must go through.
I plunged into my story and followed it as best I could from beginning to end. Neither nervous tension nor tears stopped me until I had pretty well covered the ground. Daisy Harding's face was a study. As I talked it expressed kaleidoscopically the varied emotions she must truly have experienced—amazement, pity, hurt, sorrow,—all there, but never for one moment incredulity.
The very first thing she said was, "Why, Nan, I'll bet that ​was brother Warren's greatest joy!" I said I thought it had been. Then she added, "If Carrie Votaw knew this she would want to go right out there and get that baby right away. She'd just love her!" I knew Carrie Votaw's fondness for children exceeded even Daisy's. The Votaw's had no children of their own. I told Daisy in tears that that was exactly what I had been wanting to do ever since Elizabeth Ann was born, and especially was it unbearable for me not to have her, since I no longer had him.
I shall not attempt to give the details of our conversation, for it was inclusive of every phase of my situation and would be a mere repetition of my story thus far told. I showed her letters I had, and pictures of Elizabeth Ann, and she, too, saw the likeness which her brother's child bore to him.
Miss Harding was understanding and kind, never once criticising her brother, even though she made a brave attempt to convince me that Mr. Harding's legal wife was fond of him. Though it seemed futile to me to expend so much time discussing this point upon which no one in the world was probably as intimately informed as I, I took occasion to remark that I had fully appreciated her rights, imposed by the long-standing union between her and Mr. Harding, and that this recognition on my part and my respect above everything else for my sweetheart's peace of mind, had resulted in the tragic situation I was today attempting to face.
It was pitifully plain to me that Miss Harding's immediate concern was for the Harding name, to preserve it conventionally intact, although the very method she chose to employ in her endeavor to impress me with my own duty toward my child and her brother's, only made her alarm the more apparent. It would be unfair to Elizabeth Ann, she said, to tell her who she was until she became twenty-five years of age—and perhaps had had a love-affair of her own. Miss Harding asserted that there was every probability that Elizabeth Ann might turn against me, her own mother, if she were told before that time. But this I would not admit for one second. I said that it might be a shock to Elizabeth Ann, but that I knew my child well enough to know ​that I could never lose her, because she was too much like her father and mother, both, ever to be unduly swayed emotionally by such a revelation.
"How many people know this, Nan?" Daisy Harding asked me.
I told her each one of them, not forgetting to include Tim Slade. At the mention of Tim Slade's name, Miss Harding seemed greatly distressed, and questioned very much the wisdom of my having made Tim a confidant, telling me a story in which Tim figured and which I had heard from Tim himself, though in an entirely different version. It had to do with an alleged indebtedness left unpaid by Mr. Harding in the amount of $90,000, so Miss Harding said, which amount was due a brokerage firm for stocks of some kind to which Mr. Harding had supposedly subscribed, but for which he had failed to pay previous to his passing. The firm had sued the Harding Estate and Miss Harding said that their lawyers had advised them that, inasmuch as there remained no proof that Mr. Harding did not owe it, they might better strike a compromise than have it made a matter of public knowledge. This they had done, settling for $40,000. I cannot repeat Tim's version of the same story, but it had been colored throughout with resentment frankly expressed, for it had been the brokerage firm for which Tim had acted as Washington manager, and he therefore said that he knew whereof he spoke when he said Mr. Harding actually owed the money.
I told Miss Harding, as I had told Tim Slade, that Mr. Harding had said to me upon my last visit to the White House that he was then in debt $50,000, and I suggested that perhaps this was the very indebtedness to which he referred, although it seemed to me I did remember hearing him add something about "campaign expenses." However, I had never been interested in remembering those things verbatim which pertained to business, though I knew by heart the sweet things he had said which affected our personal relations, and it was the amount of $50,000 which had stayed in my mind and the fact that the poor darling had said he just could not seem to get out of debt.
​I would not be disloyal to Tim, who was, I was sure, trying to help me in his own way, and so I tried not to bring his name into our discussions after that, except in a general way. Miss Harding suggested to me later on that I might try in an off-hand way to get Mrs. Votaw's opinion of Tim. Her sister from Washington was then in Marion, and Miss Harding said she thought it would be fine if the friends who had driven through from Washington to Battle Creek, Michigan, and had dropped Mrs. Votaw off in Marion, would invite me to drive back East with them when they stopped in Marion again in a day or two to pick up Mrs. Votaw, and that it would save me that much carfare. I said I would be delighted.