Yesterday he had been taken. This accident, sudden as a lightning-flash and more unforeseen, had ended the relation between them—though not the puzzle. Rachel had never been one to revise her opinion of a man because he was dead. Her tears had fallen now, but she had no compunctious self-deception, and her long-framed feelings were only complicated, not really altered. She saw as clearly as ever the incongruity of her husband's presence in this room where Richard Hughes had had his life, and where she now had her own.
III
All waited for the coming of John's brother, David Marquis. David was an elder brother, retired from business on some pretext or other, now loitering his way profitably and pleasantly through the later half of his life. It had been his custom to visit them frequently, spending weeks at a time idling about the house, quiet, keen of look, ready to talk with interest on any general topic, but incommunicative of opinion on any personal matter. Rachel had always felt, as she saw his observant eye first upon John and then upon her, that he saw the difference between them and sympathized with her. For this reason, although she had never criticized John to him, she had sometimes spoken freely of herself and of her own tastes and wishes; and he had listened, quietly as ever, but responsively.
She had a sort of feeling now that she would find her poise through him when he came. A sympathetic eye would help her to adjust the degree of her grief to the limits of her previous feeling.
It was eight o'clock when he arrived. The pretext of dinner in the house was over, and even the neighborly and professional attentions of the day were withdrawn. Rachel descended from her room in the quiet house at the sound of his entrance, and met gratefully the brotherly kindliness of his manner. They sat a few minutes in the hall, in question and answer of his journey and of the accident and all the circumstantial things which cluster about death itself. Rachel answered freely and fully, discovering a relief in breaking the instinctive repression of the day, and finding the sort of rest she had hoped for from his presence. David listened to her quietly, as he had always done, with his ready eye upon her.
At last he rose, turning away from her with a comprehensive look about him.
'Where is he?' he asked abruptly.
'In the library,' said Rachel, with a movement to lead the way for him.
'In there?' exclaimed David, with the emphasis of surprise. Then he closed his lips again and followed her, without meeting her questioning look.
But inside the door he paused again. Rachel had, constrained by long habit, looked first at the room, as she entered, and then at the casket, as a separate thing. The room had so long served to give her poise that she felt a sort of appeal to it even now. David's eyes rested first on the casket and then swept the room in a disapproving look.