She heaved a weary, exasperated sigh, stretching out in her chair, stretching up her arms, letting them fall again along her sides, while, sunken, extended, she seemed to abandon to him the avowal of her own perplexity and extravagance. “I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I fear. I don’t know anything,” she said.
A step came outside at this point and, the door opening, there entered a woman, older than the other two, though still not old, with a bleached face and bleached hair; a straight, old-fashioned little fringe showing under her hat. She paused at once on the threshold. “Am I interrupting?” she asked. Her voice was curiously high; not sharp or shrill; but high and reedy, like a child’s.
“No. Not a bit. Of course not. Come in, Cicely,” said Antonia sadly. She did not turn her eyes on the newcomer, but Captain Saltonhall did so, watching her as she crossed the room with her basket of spring flowers. She was dressed in weather-beaten mourning, with a knitted black silk scarf thrown back from her open jacket. The basket she carried was full of primroses and windflowers, and, setting it down on a distant table, she began to fill the bowls and vases that she had evidently placed there in readiness. Her entry and her presence, which might be prolonged, were, he felt, very inopportune; yet Antonia showed no impatience of the interruption. Perhaps, indeed, Miss Latimer’s presence was a relief to her, since she had really no answer to give to his rather arid and even provocative logic. It had been a little vicious of him to put it to her like that; but there was, he recognized, an instinct in him to show her that her perplexities were irrelevant and even absurd rather than to argue with them. She remained silent and sunken in her chair, slowly twisting her wedding-ring round and round her finger, and it must be apparent to Miss Latimer that she had interrupted an intimate conversation. He felt this to be a little unfortunate; why, he could not quite have said.
Miss Latimer, whom he had seen for the first time the night before, at dinner, after his late arrival, had not endeared herself to him. He had not liked her stillness, nor her whiteness, nor her sudden piping voice. She was effaced, but not insignificant, and had an air, for all her silence, of taking everything in. Her small face, peaked and pinched rather than delicate, would have been childish, like her voice, were it not for her eyes. He reflected now, watching her move quietly among her flowers, that it was really because of her eyes he had not liked her. They were so unchildish; so large; so bright; so pale; and her broad eyebrows, darker in tint than her faded hair, gave them an almost startling emphasis. Her face seemed barred across by these eyebrows, and, beneath them, her eyes were like captives looking out.
The flowers at last were finished and placed, beautifully placed, beautifully arranged, the primroses in shallow white earthenware, the windflowers in glasses that showed their thin, rosy stems, and when Cicely Latimer went at last, closing the door softly behind her, he felt himself draw a long breath of relief.
“That’s a singular little person,” he remarked.
Antonia, it was evident, was not thinking of Cicely Latimer. Her eyes came back to him from far distances. Or, were they far, those distances? Was it in shallows or in depths that her mind had lain dreaming?
“Is she a cousin, did you tell me?” he asked.
“Cicely?” She recovered his comment as well as his question and answered that first. “She’s a great dear, not singular at all. Yes; a cousin; Malcolm’s first cousin. A niece of old Mrs. Wellwood’s.”
“And she’s always lived here?”