“Stay here? Now? How can you ask it?”
Tears rose in the elder lady’s eyes; she began to wipe them away clandestinely one by one with her long taper finger. “It’s a desolate place now, I know; but it’s very peaceful. The garden is pretty. And we hoped that you wouldn’t mind. We even hoped that you would like it a little—the child being here. We would do all we could. Of course I know it isn’t much.”
These murmured words in the melancholy voice seemed to rouse in Eve Bruce an even more stormy passion than before. She went to Miss Sabrina and took hold of her shoulder. “Do you think I can stand seeing him,” she demanded—“here—in Jack’s place? If I could, I would go to-night.” Turning away, she broke into tearless sobs. “Oh Jack—Jack—”
Light dawned at last in Sabrina Abercrombie’s mind. “You mean Mr. Morrison?” she said, hurriedly rising. “You didn’t know, then? Cicely didn’t tell you?”
“She told me that she had married again; nothing more. Six months ago. She let me come here—you let me come here—without knowing it.”
“Oh, I thought you knew it,” said Miss Sabrina, in distress. “I did not like the marriage myself, Miss Bruce; I assure you I did not. I was very fond of John, and it seemed too sudden. If she had only waited the year—and two years would have been so much more appropriate. I go there very often—to John’s grave—indeed I do; it is as dear to me as the graves of my own family, and I keep the grass cut very carefully; I will show you. You remember when I wrote you that second time? I feared it then, though I was not sure, and I tried to prepare you a little by saying that the baby was now your chief interest, naturally. And he wasn’t going to be married,” she added, becoming suddenly incoherent, and taking hold of her throat with little rubs of her thumb and forefinger as Eve’s angry eyes met hers; “at least, not that we knew. I did not say more, because I was not sure, Miss Bruce. But after it had really happened, I supposed of course that Cicely wrote to you.”
“She!”
“But Mr. Morrison is not here; he is not here, and never has been. She met him in Savannah, and married him there; it was at a cousin’s. But she only stayed with him for a few months, and we fear that it is not a very happy marriage. He is in South America at present, and you know how far away that is. I haven’t the least idea when he is coming back.”
The door at the end of the room opened. Cicely’s little figure appeared on the threshold. Miss Sabrina, who seemed to know who it was by intuition, as she could see nothing at that distance, immediately began to whisper. “Of course we don’t know that it is an unhappy marriage; but as she came back to us so soon, it struck us so—it made that impression; wouldn’t it have made the same upon you? She must have suffered extremely, and so we ought to be doubly kind to her.” And she laid her hand with a warning pressure on Eve’s arm.
“I am not likely to be unkind as long as there is the slightest hope of getting this child away from her,” answered Eve. “For she is the mother, isn’t she? She couldn’t very well have palmed off some other baby on you, for Jack himself was here then, I know. Oh, you needn’t be afraid, I shall defer to her, yield to her, grovel to her!” She bent her head and kissed the baby’s curls. But her tone was so bitter that poor Miss Sabrina shrank away.