Beverley Thurston paid only rare visits to her home. She understood why he did not come oftener; she never pressed him to come. She had thanked him for his great service, with moist eyes and breaking voice. But she had not told him of the sweet ascendancy that her husband had gained. She had tried to let him see this change. Such revelation had been less difficult than spoken words; for all words on a subject that had now become so holy appeared to her impious.
During many days after imparting to her husband the knowledge that he must henceforward receive her mother into his household, she had dreaded the clash of their widely opposite natures, and foreseen trouble that would only lend weight and severity to that which fate had already inflicted. But by degrees she found herself laughing with Herbert at the shadows of her own fears. He treated Mrs. Twining as a kind of grim joke. With her invigorated health, she was prepared to hold him strictly accountable for his altered circumstances. Her sarcasms were more pitiless than Claire had ever remembered them. She took the attitude of a person who has been shut out from a banquet until the viands are all demolished, and then admitted to feed upon the unsatisfactory débris. She had no intention whatever of forgiving Hollister his misfortunes. In all her career of repulsive deportment she had never achieved a more obnoxious triumph. And yet, by the sheer force of good-humored, gallant, conciliatory kindness, Hollister at length succeeded in conquering her. She found it simply impossible to annoy him. He insisted upon not taking her seriously. His amiability was so impenetrable that she finally receded before it, and began to profess toward him a sort of gloomy, reluctant liking.
"I see," Claire said to him one day. "She is my punishment. But why should you share it?"
"Nonsense," he answered. "I think she is immense fun." It seemed to Claire that he was quite in earnest as he thus spoke.
"She really does like you," Claire said. "In all my life, Herbert, I have never known her to like—actually like—any one till now."
"That makes it all the funnier," he returned, with a slight, blithe laugh. She knew he was in earnest, then, and felt a deep sense of comfort.
Once Claire had spoken to him of Goldwin.... It already seemed far back in the past, now, although it was scarcely a year ago. Her words had been very few; her cheeks had burned while she uttered them.
"Herbert," she had said, "I feel that I must ask you whether you have—have met"—And here she paused. Then, while he saw the pain and shame on her face, she went stammeringly on: "Oh, you know whom I mean—I don't want even to speak his name again—but it is best that I knew on ... on what terms you are, and all that."
He grew pale while he looked at her. His voice was very grave, but perfectly kind.
"I see him nearly every day, Claire. That is inevitable, you know. I have spoken to him only once since—that time. I didn't quite know whether I was strong enough to keep my temper. But I did keep it. I told him that I had learned everything. And then I told him, very quietly, that if he ever dared to address me again I would find an excuse for cowhiding him."