She readjusted the pillows swiftly, as steps and scraps of conversation floated up the hollow shaft of the circular stairway. "Hadn't we better go?"
The Hassons were not at home, when he called two nights later; but their car might roll up any minute. "This is tantalizing, heart-love," he complained.
"It's something to have you here, anyway," as she cuddled deeper into the wide couch-swing behind the ferns on the wide railing. "We must be careful. If Lydia suspected——" Expressive eyes capped the meaning.
Jane had the Cades in for dinner, the next night; when Pelham arrived from the office, Harvey was entertaining the women with a nasal rendition of Judge Roscoe Little's mannerisms while enunciating a decision for both sides at once. The lawyer's welcome contrasted with some hidden constraint beneath Jane's tempered greeting. Throughout the meal and the talk afterwards he sensed that something was wrong. He could not quite make out what it was; perhaps it lay in his imagination.
His wife swished quickly inside, as the guests chugged away, leaving him to rearrange the porch chairs and follow more slowly. Something was up, that was clear.
She sat at her living-room desk, a litter of letters hurriedly pulled out before her. At his entrance, she raised frosty eyes to his. Without words she observed him. Disquieted by the confident, almost hostile stare, he sat heavily, clutching a handy magazine from the fresh pile beneath the reading lamp.
She did not speak. He exhaled noisily, and turned to the opening story.
"I met Lane Cullom this afternoon," she began in a moment, her voice leveled and restrained.
"What did he have to say?"
"He told me about ... about your driving with that Richard woman yesterday afternoon."