“Her husband’s death,” Miss Latimer replied.
“Yes,” said Bevis, disconcerted. “Well, it’s that, perhaps.”
“It is that undoubtedly,” said Miss Latimer. Her voice, high and piping, was as dry and emotionless as her horrid little hands. What control it showed that it should be so! He felt that he hated her; hated her the more that she was not wishing to score off him as he wished to score off her. Yet he did not dislike her, if one could draw that distinction. And now he noticed, as she lifted her cup, that her hand trembled, as if with the slight, incessant shaking of palsy. The fear of an emergency burned in her. He felt sure that she, too, had not slept.
“Well, it all comes to the same thing, doesn’t it?” he said. “Since Malcolm’s death the place oppresses her. Quite naturally; and it would be much better that she should leave it; as soon as possible.”
“I don’t think it would do Antonia any good to leave Wyndwards,” said Miss Latimer, not looking at him.
“You think it would do her good if I did, I imagine,” Bevis commented, with his dry laugh. “Thanks awfully.”
She sat silent.
“You saw, of course, last night, how it was with us,” he said. “Perhaps you saw it before.”
Still she was silent, and for so long that he thought she might not be going to answer him. But she replied at last. “No; not before. I did not suspect it before.”
Ah! He had an inner triumph. She hadn’t had her head down all the time; he was sure of it now. She had, when they went to the window, watched them. He did not quite know why this certainty should give him the sense of triumph; unless—was that it?—it pointed to some plotting secret instinct in her. “Yet you must have wondered how I came to be here—so intimately,” he said.