“The table—here. Thank you, oh, thank you, Kent.” She veiled her voice as she spoke to him. “It’s heavy—it’s so full—books—papers——”
He put it down for her and nodded, and was straying away again when she stopped him.
“Kent! Don’t sit by yourself. We”—her voice was for him alone—“we’re talking about—her. I was going to show them—Kent, stay here with us.”
He waited while she talked to him. And she talked very sweetly and kindly. She was the quiet, chiffony little creature again with the pretty, pure voice. I couldn’t make her out. She looked up at him and said something too low for me to catch, and then—
“There’s your chair. Isn’t that always your chair?” And so left him and turned to the table and the box and the others.
But he did not take the saddle-bag near Anita’s own seat. He looked irresolutely from one to another of the group that watched Anita fumbling with her keys. He looked, and his face softened, at Great-aunt, muttering over her needles. He looked at the empty chair beside me. He looked at me and found me watching him. Then, as I smiled at him just a little, he came to me and sat down. But he said nothing to me, and so I was quiet too.
But Anita was busy, hands and eyes and tongue all busy.
“When she married, you know, in that hole-and-corner fashion——” Then, as if in answer, though nobody had spoken—“Well, what else was it, when nobody knew?—when even I didn’t know——”
There was a movement in the chair beside me, and turning, I caught the ending of a glance towards my cousin. A new look, I found it, on that passive face, a roused and wondering and scornful look that transformed it. But, even as I caught it, it faded again to that other look of bleak indifference, a look to know and dread on any creature’s face, a look that must not stay on any fellow-creature’s face. I knew that well enough. So I said the first words that came, in my lowest voice, lest they should hear.
But they were talking. They did not hear.