She had so unusually prolonged her loitering about the office fire to-night that she found that her son and daughter had returned from their mild diversions with the other youth of the place and were awaiting her coming in her room.
Frank was busy with some boxing gloves and was directing with a very exacting air precisely how some stitches should be set in the puffy awkward bags which had somehow become ripped. His sister Ruth, with her thimble and waxed thread, had placed the kerosene lamp and her workbox on the little table and was patiently repairing the damages according to his directions to the best of her ability.
"Ruthie, how close you do put your head to the lamp-chimney," her mother exclaimed in irritable warning. "Do be more careful, child. In another moment you would have singed your pompadour. Where is Lucia?"
Ruth lifted the endangered rouleau, stared around a moment, as if she expected to see her cousin here. "Why, she came upstairs with me—" then suggesting, "She must be in our room, I reckon," went on with her work as before.
Mrs. Laniston, proceeding into the adjoining apartment, found that it was not lighted, save by the moon, pouring the white rays through the windows, the shades being still up, and the shutters open. Outside was the limitless wilderness of the mountains, purple and dusky against the light indeterminate blue of the sky. A few stars, large and whitely lustrous, scintillated at vast intervals, but the moon was supreme, and the white mists in the valleys shimmered with opalescent suggestions of delicate tints. Far away the sudden shrill snarling cry of a catamount smote the air, then all was silent save the rush of the torrent in the valley. For a moment it seemed that no one was in the room; then Mrs. Laniston perceived that Lucia was seated, half kneeling, close by the window, very still, very silent, and she was sure that the girl had been weeping.
"Want anything?" asked Lucia, in a voice that yet betrayed tears; then she put her elbows on the window sill and more deliberately addressed herself to the contemplation apparently of the night.
"Lucia—chilly as it is! What are you doing at that window? You'll catch your death of cold."
Lucia in a muffled voice muttered something about the air being quite balmy, and remarked that she had been already most of the evening promenading on the verandah.
"Why," said Mrs. Laniston, stolidly amazed, "Mr. Jardine was in the office the whole time."
"We are not the Siamese twins," said Lucia dully.