She rocked back and forth in the creaking old chair of which her mother was so fond, and drank her tea, as it had been their custom to drink it, black and bitter, with a parsimonious teaspoonful of condensed milk in it. She smiled to think of the contrast between this sort of tea-drinking and that at Buena Vista—the fine and delicate china, the pale amber liquid, served with cream, crystal sugar, thin slices of lemon, all sorts of biscuits and cakes, all the ceremony of the thing. She felt that, after all, there was a tranquil sort of comfort in her present state quite lacking in the other; not realizing that it was the happiness in her heart which gilded all her surroundings.
She pictured Vincent and herself in a place like this, blessed outcasts who had renounced everything, and had only each other. She imagined his coming home to her, weary and pallid; she saw herself welcoming him, smiling, proud, brave through any suffering, her ambitions all renounced, all her hope in him. She fetched a pail of water and a scrubbing-brush and a cake of horrible yellow soap, and while she worked bemused herself with a fancy that this was Vincent’s home, and that she was working for him.
Because she so longed to see him, she felt sure that he would come. When the door-bell rang, she sprang up from the floor she was scrubbing, and ran just as she was, disheveled, in her wet apron, to let him in.
She met the troubled regard of Eddie.
"How is your mother?" he inquired, staring and staring at this joyous, untidy creature.
"Better," said Angelica.
She was friendly, very well-disposed toward Eddie, and yet, at this moment, irritated by him because he wasn’t Vincent. Really she didn’t want to see him. She remained holding the door half open, and hoping that he would go, but he stood there for some time, frowning a little and biting his little yellow mustache in silence.
"Do you mind if I come in?" he asked at last.
"No, of course not! Come on in, if you want; only mommer’s in bed——”
"I wanted to see you alone," he said, his frown deepening to a scowl. "May I?"