“And at this pile of note-books standing just where Ephraim Earle must have laid them down!”
“And at this pen with the ink dried on it!”
“And at this ridiculous little China shepherdess pursing up her lips as if she knew the whole mystery but would not tell!”
Polly, whose ears had been more or less closed by the episode with Clarke just above mentioned, seemed scarcely to hear their words. She stood by her father’s work-table with her hand on her father’s chair, in a dream of love that moistened her down-cast eyes and awakened strange, tremulous movements in the corners of her sensitive lips. But soon the tokens of past ambition and of interrupted labor everywhere apparent, began to influence her spirits, and her looks showed a depression which was nothing less than startling to Clarke. Even the neighbors observed it and moved chattering away, so that in a few minutes Polly and Clarke were left standing alone in this former scene of her father’s toil and triumphs.
“What is the matter, my darling?” he now asked, seeing her turn away from the very objects he supposed would interest her most.
“I do not know,” she answered. “I do not like this room; I do not like the effect it has upon me.” Had the gliding visitant whose shadow had last fallen on these walls left some baleful influence behind him, or was the cause of her distrust of deeper origin and such as she hardly dared admit to herself?
“The air is close here,” remarked Clarke; “and the presence of all this dust is enough to stifle anyone. Let us go down into the garden and get a breath of fresh air.”
She pointed to the open windows. “How can it be close with all this light pouring in? No, no, it is not that; I am simply frightened. Did you ever stop to think?” she suddenly inquired, “what I should do or how I should feel if—if my father came back?”
“No,” he replied startled. “No one supposes him to be alive. Why should you have such morbid thoughts?”
“I do not know.” She laughed and endeavored to throw off the shadow that had fallen upon her. “You must think me very superstitious, but I would not walk down that rear passage for anything; not even with you, I should expect to encounter a tall, military-looking figure, with a face pleasing enough at first sight, but which would not bear close scrutiny. A face like the painted one below,” she added, with an involuntary shudder.