“On Tuesday afternoon at about this time.”
“What had happened on that day? Had she been out?”
“Yes, I think she told me later that she had been out.”
“Do you know where?”
“To some concert, I believe. I did not press her with questions, Miss Saunders; I am a poor inquisitor.”
Click, click; the machine was working admirably.
“Have you reason to think,” I now demanded, “that she brought her unhappiness in with her, when she returned from that concert?”
“No; for when I returned home myself, as I did earlier than usual that night, I heard her laughing with the child in the nursery. It was afterward, some few minutes afterward, that I came upon her sitting in such a daze of misery, that she did not recognize me when I spoke to her. I thought it was a passing mood at the time; she is a sensitive woman and she had been reading—I saw the book lying on the floor at her side; but when, having recovered from her dejection—a dejection, mind you, which she would neither acknowledge nor explain—she accompanied me out to dinner, she showed even more feeling on our return, shrinking unaccountably from leaving the carriage and showing, not only in this way but in others, a very evident distaste to reenter her own house. Now, whatever hold I still retain upon her is of so slight a nature that I am afraid every day she will leave me.”
“Leave you!”
My fingers paused; my astonishment had got the better of me.