“I do tell you,” Kate panted.
“Well—what is it?”
Silence fell—always the same silence. Kate glanced desperately about the imprisoning room. Every panel and moulding of its walls, every uncompromising angle or portly curve of its decorous furniture, seemed equally leagued against her, forbidding her, defying her, to speak.
“Ask Fred Landers,” she said, at bay.
“But I have; I saw him on my way here. And he says he doesn’t know—that you wouldn’t explain.”
“Why should I have to explain? I’ve said Major Fenno ought not to marry Anne. I’ve known him longer than any of you. Isn’t it likely that I know him better?”
The words came from her precipitate and shrill; she felt she was losing all control of her face and voice, and lifted her handkerchief to her lips to hide their twitching.
“Aunt Kate—!” Nollie Tresselton gasped it out on a new note of terror; then she too fell silent, slowly turning her eyes away.
In that instant Kate Clephane saw that she had guessed, or if not, was at least on the point of guessing; and fresh alarm possessed the mother. She tried to steady herself, to raise new defences against this new danger. “Some men are not meant to marry: they’re sure to make their wives unhappy. Isn’t that reason enough? It’s a question of character. In those ways, I don’t believe character ever changes. That’s all.”
“That’s all.” The word was said. She had been challenged again, and had again shrunk away from the challenge.