"I suggest sending out a card——" she purred, "just a neat card" (here she measured off an imaginary card with her fingers), "saying that owing to the bereavement in the family the wedding has been indefinitely postponed. Of course," she sighed, "it isn't exactly true."
"Won't take place at all," exploded the doctor, going on at once with his reading.
"Evidently not," said Mrs. Batholommey, "but if the whole matter looks very strange to me—How is it going to look to other people—especially when we haven't any—any rational explanation—as yet? We must get out of it in some fashion. I'm sure I don't know how else we can explain—I don't like telling anything that isn't true—but—there was to be a wedding." Mrs. Batholommey waved her right hand. "There isn't to be any wedding," she waved her left hand. "At least, Frederik isn't to be in it—and one must account for it somehow?"
"Whose business is it?" fired the doctor, in a voice that made Mrs. Batholommey start like a frightened rabbit.
For one moment his eyes peered fiercely at her under their shaggy brows, and then he returned to his narrative.
"Nobody's at all," she made great haste to say. "Nobody's at all—nobody's at all, of course. But Kathrien's position is certainly unusual; and the strangest part of it is—she doesn't appear to feel her situation. She's sitting alone in the library seemingly placid and happy. She acts as if a weight were off her mind. But the main point I've been arguing is this: Should the card we're going to send out have a narrow black border, or not?"
She turned toward the doctor and indicated with her fingers the width of black border that seemed to her to fit the occasion. But her trouble was entirely wasted.
Dr. McPherson was once more engrossed in his writing, and had forgotten her existence.
"Well, Doctor," she said in an injured tone, "you don't appear to be interested. You don't even answer!"
"I couldn't," snapped Dr. McPherson. "I didn't know whether you were talking again or still."