"That is what I thought." Angelica's tone was one of relief. "Of course if I were needed about anything it would be different; but you are better able than I am to decide what ought to be done. I always feel so helpless," she added sadly, "when there is illness in the house."
With the relinquishment of responsibility, she appeared to grow almost cheerful. If she had suddenly heard that Letty was much better, or had discovered, after harrowing uncertainty, the best and surest treatment for pneumonia, her face would probably have worn just such a relieved and grateful expression. In one vivid instant, with a single piercing flash of insight, the other woman seemed to look straight through that soft feminine body to Mrs. Blackburn's thin and colourless soul. "I know what she is now—she is thin," said Caroline to herself. "She is thin all through, and I shall never feel the same about her again. She doesn't want trouble, she doesn't want responsibility because it makes her uncomfortable—that is why she turns Letty over to me. She is beautiful, and she is sweet when nothing disturbs her, but I believe she is selfish underneath all that softness and sweetness which costs her so little." And she concluded with a merciless judgment, "That is why she wasn't kind to that poor old woman in Pine Street. It would have cost her something, and she can't bear to pay. She wants to get everything for nothing."
The iron in her soul hardened suddenly, for she knew that this moment of revelation had shattered for her the romance of Briarlay. She might still be fascinated by Mrs. Blackburn; she might still pity her and long to help her; she might still blame Blackburn bitterly for his hardness—but she could never again wholly sympathize with Angelica.
"There isn't anything in the world that you can do," she repeated gravely.
"I knew you'd say that, and it is so good of you to reassure me." Mrs. Blackburn smiled from the threshold. "Now, I must dress, or I shall be late for the rehearsal. If the doctor comes while I am away, please ask him if he thinks another nurse is necessary. David tells me he telephoned for an extra one for night duty; but, dear Miss Meade, I feel so much better satisfied when I know that Letty is in your charge every minute."
"Oh, she is in my charge. Even if the other nurse comes, I shall still sleep in the room next to her."
"You are so splendid!" For an instant Angelica shone on her from the hall. Then the door closed behind her, and an hour afterwards, as Caroline sat by Letty's bed, with her hand on her pulse, she heard the motor start down the drive and turn rapidly into the lane.
At one o'clock the doctor came, and he was still there a quarter of an hour later, when Mrs. Blackburn rustled, with an anxious face, into the room. She wore a suit of grey cloth, and, with her stole and muff of silver fox, and her soft little hat of grey velvet, she made Caroline think of one of the aspen trees, in a high wind, on the lawn at The Cedars. She was all delicate, quivering gleams of silver, and even her golden hair looked dim and shadowy, under a grey veil, as if it were seen through a mist.
"Oh, Doctor, she isn't really so ill, is she?" Her eyes implored him to spare her, and while she questioned him, she flung the stole of silver fox away from her throat, as if the weight of the furs oppressed her.
"Well, you mustn't be too anxious. We are doing all we can, you know. In a day or two, I hope, we'll have got her over the worst." He was a young man, the son of Mrs. Colfax's friend, old Doctor Boland, and all his eager youth seemed to start from his eyes while he gazed at Angelica. "Beauty like that is a power," thought Caroline almost resentfully. "It hides everything—even vacancy." All the men she had seen with Mrs. Blackburn, except her husband, had gazed at her with this worshipful and protecting look; and, as she watched it shine now in Doctor Boland's eyes, she wondered cynically why David Blackburn alone should be lacking in this particular kind of chivalry. "He is the only man who looks at her as if she were a human being, not an angel," she reflected. "I wonder if he used to do it once, and if he has stopped because he has seen deeper than any of the others?"