“Of course, of course,” replied the old man, hastily. “But there is no mention of dying, Sabrina says nothing that looks like it; Daniels, our old friend—why, Daniels would cross twenty times a day if he thought there was danger.”
“I can’t argue, grandpa. But I shall go; I shall go to-night,” Cicely responded.
She was seated on a sofa in Paul Tennant’s parlor, a large room, furnished with what the furniture dealer of Port aux Pins called a “drawing-room set.” The sofa of this set was of the pattern named tête-à-tête, very hard and slippery, upholstered in hideous green damask. Cicely was sitting on the edge of this unreposeful couch, her feet close together on a footstool, her arms tight to her sides and folded from the elbows in a horizontal position across the front of her waist. She looked very rigid and very small.
“But supposing, when you get there, that you find him up,—well?” suggested the judge.
“Shouldn’t I be glad?” answered Cicely, defiantly. “What questions you ask!”
“But we couldn’t be glad. Can’t you think a little of us?—you are all we have left now.”
“Aunt Sabrina doesn’t feel as you do—if you mean Aunt Sabrina; she would be delighted to have me come back. She likes Ferdie; it is only you who are so hard about him.”
“Sabrina doesn’t know. But supposing it were only I, is my wish nothing to you?” And the old man put out his hand in appeal.
“No,” answered Cicely, inflexibly. “I am sorry, grandpa; but for the moment it isn’t, nothing is anything to me now but Ferdie. And what is it that Aunt Sabrina doesn’t know, pray? There’s nothing to know; Ferdie had one of his attacks—he has had them before—and I came away with Jack; that is all. Eve has exaggerated everything. I told her I would come here, come to Paul, because Ferdie likes Paul; but I never intended to stay forever, and now that Ferdie is ill, do you suppose that I will wait one moment longer than I must? Of course not.”
The door opened and Eve came in. Cicely glanced at her; then she turned her eyes away, looking indifferently at the whitewashed wall.