“Good night, Maude,” said Miss Carter.
And in those six words they said more than some people could have expressed in an hour’s conversation.
III
Miss Carter, lying awake in the dark, had before her eyes the image of Maude, so pale and grave and so very young, standing there in that dazzlingly white, highly efficient kitchen. The night wind blew in at the open window, fluttering the curtains, and outside in the dark garden a little owl gave its tremulous cry. A great loneliness came over her. She thought of this old house, with all those rooms, so neat and orderly—and empty, standing in the dark, quiet garden, and with herself and poor[Pg 288] lovely young Maude all alone in it. Two spinsters all alone!
“No!” said Miss Carter, aloud.
Miss Carter’s forefathers, three hundred years ago, had kept themselves alive on the “stern and rock-bound coast” of New England because of their grim determination; and though Miss Carter had inherited very little of their grimness, she certainly was determined. Then and there she made up her mind; and, what is more, she was positively artful about it.
“I was wondering,” she said to Maude, the next morning. “Didn’t Mr. Rhodes say that his business was up in Massachusetts? How did you come to meet him, child?”
“Oh, he’s a great friend of Mr. Lawrence’s,” said Maude, very, very casually. “Mr. Lawrence’s firm are shipowners, you know, and we write all their insurance for them. Their office is on the same floor with us, and I often—I often have to run in there. Whenever Mr. Rhodes comes to New York, he always stops in there, and I’ve met him there several times.”
“I see!” said Miss Carter brightly.
What she saw was the wave of color that rose in Maude’s cheeks. She also saw how a letter could be addressed to Mr. Rhodes, in care of Mr. Lawrence, in the same building where Maude worked.