At that hour, and under such circumstances, nothing could have induced her to obey the request. Never before had she disobeyed her father, and it gave her a shock to do it, but all the same she enjoyed the sensation. Make tea for Suneva! For the woman who had supplanted her in her father’s affection, and in all her rights! She felt that she would rather take her child, and walk out with it upon the dark and desolate moor.
But she was slow of speech, and in her anger and amazement she could find no word to 200 interpret her emotion. One long, steady look she gave her father—a look which Peter never forgot—then, haughtily as a discrowned queen, but with a face as white as snow, she left the room. Suneva laughed, but it was not an ill-natured laugh. “It would have been better had we told her, Peter,” she said. “If I had been thy daughter, I should not have liked thee to bring home a wife without a word about it.”
“It will be an ill day with Peter Fae when he asks his women what he shall do, or how he shall do it. Yes, indeed!”
Suneva looked queerly at him. She did not speak a word, but her dancing, gleaming eyes said very plainly that such an “ill day” might be coming even for Peter Fae.
Then she set herself to making the tea he had asked for. There were the cakes Margaret had baked, and sweets, and cold meat, and all kinds of spirits at hand; and very soon Margaret heard the pleasant clatter of china, and the hum of subdued but constant conversation, broken at intervals by Suneva’s shrill rippling laugh. Margaret made up her mind that hour, that however short or long her stay might be 201 in Suneva’s house, she would never again lift a finger in its ordering.
In the morning she remained in her own room until her father had gone to the store. When she went down stairs, she found the servants, her servants, eagerly waiting upon Suneva, who was examining her new possessions. As she entered the room, Suneva turned with a piece of the best china in her hand, and said, “Oh, it is thee! Good morning, Margaret.” Then in a moment Margaret’s dour, sulky temper dominated her; she looked at Suneva, but answered her not one word.
No two women could have been more unlike each other. Margaret, dressed in a plain black gown, was white and sorrowful. Suneva, in a scarlet merino, carefully turned back over a short quilted petticoat that gave pleasant glimpses of her trim latched shoes and white stockings, had a face and manner bright and busy and thoroughly happy. Margaret’s dumb anger did not seem to affect her. She went on with her work, ordering, cleaning, rearranging, sending one servant here and another there, and took no more notice of the pale, sullen woman on the hearth, than if she had not existed.
However, when Margaret brought the child down stairs, she made an effort at conciliation. “What a beautiful boy!” she exclaimed. “How like poor Jan! What dost thou call him?” And she flipped her fingers, and chirruped to the child, and really longed to take him in her arms and kiss him.
But to Margaret the exclamation gave fresh pain and offense. “What had Suneva to do with Jan? And what right had she to pity him, and to say ‘poor Jan!’” She did not understand that very often a clumsy good nature says the very thing it ought to avoid. So she regarded the words as a fresh offense, and drew her child closer to her, as if she were afraid even it would be taken from her.