“I beg you to go,” Eve entreated.
Paul hesitated. “Will you promise not to leave this lodge until I come back?”
“Yes.”
Paul went out. As he did so, he saw the judge approaching, leaning heavily on Hollis’s arm.
“It’s nothing,” Hollis explained. “The judge, he’s only tuckered out; a night’s rest is all he needs.”
“Take me to Cicely,” the judge commanded.
“Cicely ought to be quiet now,” Paul answered in a decided voice. “Eve is with her, and they’re all right; women do better alone together, you know, when one of them has hysteria.”
“Hysteria! Is that what you called it?” said the judge.
“Of course. And it’s natural,” Paul went on:—“poor little girl, coming to herself suddenly here in the woods, only to realize that her husband is dead. We shall have to be doubly tender with her, now that she is beginning to be herself again.”
“You didn’t mind it, then?” pursued the judge. He was relieved, of course—glad. Still it began to seem almost an impertinence that Paul should have paid so little attention to what had been to the rest of them so terrible.