"He won't touch a morsel, mother; it is useless to ask him. He is going away just as soon as we have finished packing."
"But where is he going? I didn't know that he had any place to go to."
"Oh, a man can always find a place somewhere."
"How can you take it so lightly, Susan," protested Mrs. Treadwell, beginning to cry.
"That's the only sensible way to take it, isn't it, Oliver?" asked Susan, gaily.
"Don't get into a fidget about me, Aunt Belinda," said Oliver, pushing the pile of newspapers out of her way, while she sat down nervously on the end of a packing-case and wiped her eyes on the fringe of her purple shawl. The impulsive kindness with which he had spoken to her a few hours before had vanished from his tone, and left in its place an accent of irritation. His sympathy, which was never assumed, resulted so entirely from his mood that it was practically independent of the person or situation which appeared to inspire it. There were moments when, because of a sensation of mental or physical well-being, he overflowed with a feeling of tenderness for the beggar at the crossing; and there were longer periods, following a sudden despondency, when the suffering of his closest friend aroused in him merely a sense of personal outrage. So complete, indeed, was his absorption in himself, that even his philosophy was founded less upon an intellectual conception of the universe than it was upon an intense preoccupation with his own personality.
"But you don't mean that you are going for good?—that you'll never come back to see Susan and me again?" whimpered his aunt, while her sagging mouth trembled.
"You can't expect me to come back after the things Uncle Cyrus has said to me."
A look so bitter that it was almost venomous crept into Mrs. Treadwell's face. "He just did it to worry me, Oliver. He has done everything he could think of to worry me ever since he persuaded me to marry him. I sometimes believe," she added, gloating over the idea like a decayed remnant of the aristocratic spirit, "that he has always been jealous of me because I was born a Bolingbroke."
To Oliver, who had not like Susan grown accustomed through constant repetition to Mrs. Treadwell's delusion, this appeared so fresh a view of Cyrus's character, that it caught his interest even in the midst of his own absorbing perplexities. Until he saw Susan's head shake ominously over her mother's shoulder, it did not occur to him that his aunt, whom he supposed to be without imagination, had created this consoling belief out of her own mental vacancy.