"One thing you said I don't understand," she began, and Mrs. Faulkner's pretty face showed plainly there had been something of a storm.
"I said this, Laura," her friend responded, permitting her to go no further, but turning at the step and looking up into her indignant eyes. "You do yourself injury by showing such concern about Captain Barclay. Everybody says so, and it's all wasted as far as he's concerned. He never notices your messages in any way."
It was galling to feel herself censured or criticised, but Mrs. Winn was becoming used to that. It was worse than galling to be told that her whilom lover now turned from her almost with contempt. She could bear it that they should say that Galahad Barclay was again circling within danger of her fascinations and would speedily find himself powerless to resist. She could not bear it that they should declare him dead to her. The anger ablaze in her eyes and flushing her cheeks was something even Mrs. Faulkner had never seen before. It was as though she had roused some almost tigerish trait. For a moment Laura stood glaring at her visitor, one hand nervously clutching at the balcony rail, the other at the snugly buttoned bodice of her dark gown. At that instant the door of Barclay's quarters opened and the sound of glad voices preceded but a second or two the appearance of feminine drapery at the threshold. Mrs. Brooks came backing into view, chatting volubly with some one still invisible. Mrs. Frazier came sidling after, and then as they reached the open air the deep tones of their invalid host were heard mingling with the lighter, shriller, if not exactly silvery accents of his visitors. One glance they threw towards the young matron at the opposite end of the piazza, and then it seemed as though Mrs. Frazier promptly precipitated herself into the doorway again, as though to block it against Barclay's possible egress. "Determined not to let him see me, nor me him," were the unspoken words that flashed through Laura's thoughts. Some devil of mischief seemed to whisper in her ear, for when Mrs. Faulkner turned again, there stood her hostess holding forth for her inspection a little note addressed to Mrs. H. H. Winn in a hand Mrs. Faulkner recognized at once as that of Barclay. With an icy sneer the irate lady spoke:
"You think he doesn't write. This came only an hour ago."
Not five minutes later Mrs. Frazier turned to Mrs. Faulkner and asked, "What was Laura Winn showing you?—a letter?"
Mrs. Blythe was passing at the moment, Ada Lawrence, a tall, pallid slip of a girl, in her first black dress, walking sadly at her side. Mrs. Faulkner nodded assent to the question, but glanced significantly at the passers-by, on their way seemingly to the house the elders had just left. Mrs. Blythe bowed courteously and smiled, but the smile was one of those half-hearted attempts that seemed to wither instantly at Mrs. Frazier's solemn and distant salutation.
"Now what's that woman taking Ada Lawrence there for?" was Mrs. Frazier's query the instant the two were out of earshot, and for the moment she forgot the letter and the significant glance in Mrs. Faulkner's eyes. But Mrs. Brooks had not, and no sooner had the door of Barclay's quarters opened and swallowed up the new callers than the major's wife turned back to it.
"You don't mean a letter from—him?" she asked, with a nod of the head at Barclay's quarters.
"I didn't mean to say anything about it," said Mrs. Faulkner, with proper hesitation, "but you seem to know as much as I do, and she made no secret of it whatever. Indeed, I don't know that there's anything in it that anybody mightn't see."
"I think she has no business whatever receiving letters now that her husband's away—nor any other time, for that matter," said Mrs. Frazier, hotly; "and I mean to tell her so; and I'm astonished at him."