Miss Southgate shook her head.
"And yet," said Williams, "the marriage turned out well, wouldn't you say?"
Antonia's fine arched black brows went up in doubt.
"It hadn't the disadvantages you ordinarily expect from such marriages," she answered. "She did not run about flirting with young men or spending my brother's money foolishly. On the other hand, she did not introduce any of that gayety and youth into his daily life, any of that humor and high spirits— She is a curious little person, good as gold, but not vital, not alive."
Williams went away wondering. Corpses don't blush like that, he thought. The wind had died down as the sun set; and now, with a red sky over the Palisades, the Riverside was not a bad place for a walk. He strolled southward, trying to remember, now that he had seen Doris Helen Southgate in the flesh, all that he had heard about her in the days when she was only a name—the folly of an otherwise shrewd client.
He thought he remembered that she was some relation to the clergyman of the Southgates' church—an orphan trying to support herself by one of those extremely ill-paid occupations which are considered ladylike. He thought she had come to the Southgate house to read to Antonia during a temporary affliction of the eyes. Before he had seen her he had thought of her as a serpent, insinuating herself into the household and then coiling herself so firmly that she could never be driven out; but now it seemed to him more as if a kitten had strayed into that great mausoleum and had been shut up there for life.
He remembered a frequent phrase of Southgate's, which he had never noticed much at the time: "Yes, I read it with great interest—at least my wife read it to me." He had been fond of being read aloud to, especially at night, when he couldn't sleep. Williams wondered whether Doris Helen had spent six years reading aloud—above the rustling of the avenue of palms at Pasadena, above the rattle of the private car as they went back and forth and across the continent. Mercy, it was no wonder she wasn't much alive. And Southgate had never given her the trouble of signing a check, hadn't he? Well, that was one way to put it. No, of course, he said to himself, he did not want to see the little widow break loose—to hear that she was gambling at Monte Carlo or being robbed of her jewels at some café on the Left Bank; but he would have been glad to see her acting on the emotion that had turned her eyes so black that afternoon.
Although he went to the house several times again in the course of the next few days, he did not see Mrs. Southgate. She was always engaged with the correspondence which had resulted from her husband's death.
"She writes a very nice letter, if I give her a general idea of what ought to be said," Antonia had explained to Williams.
One afternoon about a month after Southgate's death, as Williams was leaving his office in Nassau Street, a card was brought to him. He did not know the name, and he sent word that he was just going home. If the gentleman could give him some idea—