He gathered the skirts of his gown more closely about him and regarded her from under his shaggy eyebrows with an expression of deadly earnestness in singular contrast with his appearance.
“You spent long nights in tears, child, longing for the sound of his step?”
“How do you know?” she answered, flashing at him.
“Your mother did,” he sighed.
There fell a heavy pause, during which Belphegor sang with the simmering phials a quaint duet as fine as a gossamer thread.
“Until the morning dawned, when I dreaded the sound of that step,” said the widow at last.
Master Simon frowned more deeply. New wrinkles gathered on his countenance.
“A worthless fellow! A wastrel, a gambler, a reprobate! And you doing your wife’s part of screening and mending, nursing and paying. Aye, aye, I know it all. It was your mother’s fate.”
“And did my mother get cursed for her pains, and struck?”
The old man started as if the word had indeed been a blow.