“If you only wouldn’t say ‘at the present moment’!” Catherine snapped.
With not a second glance at the governess, but a peremptory gesture to her physician, she turned back to the stairs.
Shayle, his athletic shoulders squaring, followed her.
“You needn’t take it out on me because I’m not a clever talker,” Dolores heard him say to Catherine as, his hand at her elbow, he assisted her in the descent “My stupidity ain’t inherited. It’s a gift.”
At a sound Dolores turned to see Jack looking on from his door. His eyes were wide and grave—in expression much like his father’s. His head slanted exactly as the elder John held his. With his laboriously acquired, makeshift walk, he crossed the balcony to a stop before her.
“Something said to me——” he began; paused to think; continued: “I guess I mean that myself said to myself I’d best come out and ’tend to you. Maybe I’m foolish to worry about you,’Lores, and yet——”
“And yet,” she supplied, serious as he, “maybe you’re not. Look after me, Jack. I need you to, for you are my safest friend.”
She took comfort in his elderly assurances; tried to throw off the prescience that weighed on her at thought of Catherine’s outraged look. But she was afraid.
Look high, look low, she was afraid.