His old cousin broke in with a rush, "Well, I think you'd better tell her," and felt instantly that this was not at all the answer he had wished for. "You don't want to do it," she said.
"Oh, I never want to do anything," he admitted. "It's always the easiest way."
"The easiest way lands you in some pretty hard places," she observed.
He made no comment on this, but his silence did not save him from her further going on, "Look where it landed you with Flora."
He was stirred to a moment of heat, "What are you talking about, Hetty? By God, I never refused Flora anything she wanted. If you call that the easiest way!"
She flared up in a momentary impatience at his denseness, but wasted no words on an issue no longer vital.
"Well, I think you'd better tell Marise," she repeated stubbornly.
He set this on one side for a moment as irrelevant, and said, "All I want to know from you is whether you've ever seen a sign in her to make you think she had heard anything. Did you ever notice when she speaks of her mother ... or whether she doesn't speak?"
She scorned, as he knew she would, coloring the truth to win a point, "No, I never did," she stated honestly.
"Well then, that's all I wanted to know. I know you'd have seen it, if it were there, she's been so much with you."