"What?" she exclaimed, and the final t of the word was like a bullet. "But this is my Sunday."
"But he didn't know that."
"Didn't he, indeed? It's been my experience that your father usually contrives to know anything that it's to his advantage to know—and the other way round. He just thought he could get away with it. Well, he can't!"
"He's been away on business for three months, mother."
"Has he so? Fortunately I am no longer obliged to keep track of your father's comings and goings—especially the latter. When I did attempt to—"
She paused, bitterly brooding on her past anxieties; and Lita, taking her again by the arm, succeeded in setting her in motion. They entered the building where Lita lived, mounted the stairs in silence and went to Lita's room. Aurelia, who shared the room, being in the infirmary, secured them from interruption.
Mrs. Hazlitt walked at once to the window and peered out in all directions; but the window did not command that part of the grounds which lay between the chapel and the main gate. Finding the object of her hostile interest was not in sight, she turned back to her child.
"It's really too much," she said, "that I cannot have my one quiet Sunday a month with you. I never wanted you to go to boarding school at all. I only yielded because your coming here gave your father a place where he could see you without being obliged to come to my house—not pleasant for either of us. But it's a mistake to yield an inch to some people, as I ought to have known. I insist on my own Sunday. All other days are open to him, except this one, and so, of course, that's just the only one—"
"Only, mother dear, while he's been away I have been coming down to you in New York for most of my Sundays."
Mrs. Hazlitt had a way of opening her large black eyes until her curved lashes were flattened against her lids and looked as if they trimmed her eyes with black fringe. She did it now.