“Louis Cheviot?”
“Don’t you see, he’s failed. He’s been enormously kind;—he’s been wonderful, but he couldn’t get my father to come home.”
“Are you thinking one of the boys might?”
Hildegarde shook her head. “They couldn’t make him.”
“Who could?”
She looked round the room with eyes that again were filling. But they came back to Bella’s face. “Father would do it for me,” she said; “don’t you know he would?”
“Well,” said the other, staring, “if not for you, for no one.”
“Yes, yes, he’d do it for me!” Hildegarde moved about the room with a restlessness unusual in her. She went to each window in turn, pulled down the blinds and drew the curtains; and still she moved about the room. Excitement had drunk her tears. Her face was full of light.
Bella did not stir, but no look or move of Hildegarde’s escaped her. She fixed her eyes on the gleaming dragons that crawled at the hem of Hildegarde’s skirt. The voices in the next room were audible, but not the words.
Across the street the tireless female had again struck up her favorite march.