“Alone!” repeated Azalea beneath her breath. “And never a word of your sister all these years, Keefe?”
She smiled at him so beautifully, bending forward, questioning him as it seemed, so almost gayly, that he looked at her in amazement.
“Not a word, Azalea, in all these years—not one word. I used to hope and pray to meet her, but after a time I tried to put it out of my mind. I didn’t want it to undermine me. We Irish are queer folk, Azalea. We can wear ourselves out with longing. I didn’t want to do that. Miss Foster had left me a little fortune; enough to let me keep on with my art studies and to give me a little start in life. I had to leave the comfortable old house where I had spent such contented years, because that went to make a home for old ladies. But I lived on well enough in my attic—Oh, don’t be frightened at the word. I lived in an attic by choice. Then perhaps I overworked. At any rate, the doctor said I must get out of the city and live in these mountains for two or three years. So here I am, piling up canvases in Miles McEvoy’s barn and as happy as anyone need be, especially since I met you—you people, Zalie. It may seem odd to you, but these few weeks here with the Rowantrees and ‘you-all’ at Oriole’s Nest, have been the happiest of my life.”
“I don’t think it odd at all,” cried Azalea. “Oh, Keefe, I think it the most natural thing in the world.”
“Why?” he asked, astonished at her tone. But she remembered that dragged and wearied heart of his and putting her lips tight together, would say nothing. He had to take her smiling silences for his answer.
Then, before he could urge her, some one stood on the doorstep without the room. Azalea, seeing the shadow fall across the floor guessed who it was.
“Oh, you!” she cried happily, “you, of all people! Come in, Mrs. Rowantree. Keefe’s fallen ill and Aunt Zillah said that you’d be just the person to know what to do for him.”
“I hope I’ll know,” said Mary Cecily in her sweet Irish voice, “but how can we be sure of that at all? Still, it’s myself that must confess to some experience, what with the rearing of the four children and the being so far from a medical man. What’s ailing you, Mr. Keefe, dear?” she asked with beautiful gentleness, stooping over him, sister-fashion, and taking his hand in hers.
And then Azalea knew beyond all doubt! She wondered that she had not always known. Each had reminded her of the other, and yet with a strange stupidity she had not realized it, no doubt because it had seemed so certain that they must be strangers whose paths never had crossed.
She tried to be calm, to take the scene as a matter of course, but those two who had so longed for each other being there, so near, so unlike in some ways, yet so like with their sad-glad faces, made her put her hands to her eyes to hide the sight of them. She almost forgot that they did not yet know. She all but forgot Keefe’s heart and his need for quiet.