It was from such a letter as this that Louise now looked up and gazed pensively at the reddish rays of smothered London sunshine flickering, with the movement of the curtains, upon the rug. Laura herself, just having finished a far more informative letter from Blythe, caught the pensive expression and not unnaturally associated it with the still open letter on Louise's lap.
"Of course the man is impatient, dear," she said to Louise, weaving without effort into the subject matter of the girl's reflections. "But you must not mind that. Being impatient—at such an interesting juncture of their poor, benighted lives, I mean—is good for them. Really, it is the best thing that can possibly happen to them. It chastens them, teaches them the benignities, the joys of—er—abnegation and renunciation and things. By the way, Louise," veering about with diverting instability, "when do you really and privately mean to get rid of the man by marrying him?"
Louise, not without an effort, shook herself out of her reverie, folded her letter from Blythe with an odd sort of deliberation, and looked frankly enough at Laura.
"It is not certain, dear," she replied, with no irresolution of tone, "that I shall ever marry him."
Laura regarded the girl with a gaze of perfectly unaffected stupefaction.
"I wonder," she said, as if to herself, "if the acoustics of these London rooms can be so atrocious, or if I am really becoming so old that my hearing already is affected? Say that again, child. It isn't possible that I could have heard you correctly."
Louise was unable to repress a slight smile at the extraordinary bewilderment which was visible on Laura's face, but her tone was distinct enough when she repeated:
"It is far from a certainty that I shall marry him at all, Laura."
Laura rose from her deep chair, gathered her "getting-up gown" hastily about her, crossed over to where Louise was sitting, placed an arm about the girl's shoulder, and gazed wonderingly into her eyes.
"It is impossible," she said, "that you two are quarrelling across the wide Atlantic? I shall cable John Blythe this very hour! It is his fault! It must be his fault!" and she rushed to her escritoire and pretended to fumble for her cable blanks.