He paused, bestowing minute care upon the removal of the little band from his cigar; and as he seemed to have concluded his narrative, Eugene spoke out of the shadow beyond a heavily shaded lamp: “What do you mean by that?” he asked quietly.
“Oh, she’s cheerful enough,” said Amberson, still not looking at either his young hostess or her father. “At least,” he added, “she manages to seem so. I’m afraid she hasn’t been really well for several years. She isn’t stout you know—she hasn’t changed in looks much—and she seems rather alarmingly short of breath for a slender person. Father’s been that way for years, of course; but never nearly so much as Isabel is now. Of course she makes nothing of it, but it seemed rather serious to me when I noticed she had to stop and rest twice to get up the one short flight of stairs in their two-floor apartment. I told her I thought she ought to make George let her come home.”
“Let her?” Eugene repeated, in a low voice. “Does she want to?”
“She doesn’t urge it. George seems to like the life there—in his grand, gloomy, and peculiar way; and of course she’ll never change about being proud of him and all that—he’s quite a swell. But in spite of anything she said, rather than because, I know she does indeed want to come. She’d like to be with father, of course; and I think she’s—well, she intimated one day that she feared it might even happen that she wouldn’t get to see him again. At the time I thought she referred to his age and feebleness, but on the boat, coming home, I remembered the little look of wistfulness, yet of resignation, with which she said it, and it struck me all at once that I’d been mistaken: I saw she was really thinking of her own state of health.”
“I see,” Eugene said, his voice even lower than it had been before. “And you say he won’t ‘let’ her come home?”
Amberson laughed, but still continued to be interested in his cigar. “Oh, I don’t think he uses force! He’s very gentle with her. I doubt if the subject is mentioned between them, and yet—and yet, knowing my interesting nephew as you do, wouldn’t you think that was about the way to put it?”
“Knowing him as I do—yes,” said Eugene slowly. “Yes, I should think that was about the way to put it.”
A murmur out of the shadows beyond him—a faint sound, musical and feminine, yet expressive of a notable intensity—seemed to indicate that Lucy was of the same opinion.