“A wreck? Oh, yes, a wreck. Everything is a wreck.”
She sank into a chair and sat staring at the floor. After a moment she collected herself to ask: “Has Sylvia written?” And then: “What has Sylvia written?”
“Nothing—except the letter she sent before you got there. She wanted you to wait until she was through with her housecleaning—”
“I know all about that! David Trench, if you ever speak to that unprincipled girl, I’ll....” Lavinia glared, her heart pounding visibly. “She ... I might have known what to expect, after the letter she wrote when Syd and Eileen were married. She’s worse than Eileen, a hundred times worse. She’s capable—of lying—about her own mother. She’ll try to lie out of this thing. You can’t depend on a word she says. And Oliver’s as unprincipled as she is.”
In times of stress it had always been a source of relief to Lavinia to talk—to abuse some one. More often than not, David was the victim. Now she was hardly conscious of his presence. Theodora she did not see at all. She was sunk in the morass of her own misery, a misery so devastating that her worst enemy must have pitied her.
“Was Sylvia unkind to you?”
“Unkind? I like the way you pick your words!”
“I’m so sorry, Vine. You must make allowances for the hot weather—and Oliver’s uncertain temper. Sylvia had enough to upset her.”
“That’s no excuse for treating her mother in such a shameful way.”
She went up to her room and shut herself in. From behind a curtain she watched while David went to the cottage to consult his son. There was no train arriving from Detroit at that hour of the day. It later developed that Lavinia had left the train at Littlefield, and that her travel-stained appearance was the result of a rough ride in a service car. David had often come home that way, when he had contracts in Pana and Sullivan. He knew, too, that it was the Chicago train; but the fact was without significance for him.