He studied her, surprised and thoughtful. “Won’t your husband be kind of worried about you?” he suggested mildly, and was startled at the fierce anger behind her reply.
“I want him to be worried! Oh, I want him to be tortured!” she cried, and became absorbed once more in that which was printed on the page before her. “The body has not been recovered,” she read aloud after a moment; and with a quick change of mood laughed at him, shuddering faintly. “It does give me a creepy feeling,” she said.
“I should think it might,” Jeff assented mildly. “Yes, I should think it would.”
She was wearing a gingham dress belonging to his wife, which he had found at her request. Now, sitting across the table from him, she began to tremble and to laugh in nervous bursts of sound.
Jeff asked, “What’s the matter! What you laughing at?”
“I can’t stop,” she told him helplessly. “It just strikes me as funny. I can’t help laughing. If I didn’t laugh I should cry. They think I’m dead. Dead!” The word was high pitched, almost like a scream.
Jeff had seen feminine hysteria before; he said sternly, “You got to stop. Now you be still.”
The woman controlled herself at once, nodding reassuringly. “Yes, I’ll be still. I will be still,” she promised. “You won’t let them find me here, will you? You won’t let them know I’m here?”
“Andy Wattles stopped here this morning, in the truck,” Jeff answered. “I told him you’d come. He’d heard me say you was thinking of coming. It was safest to tell him.”
“But I wasn’t thinking of coming!” she cried, appalled.