“Doth she sleep, Edith?” she whispered.
I said, “Ay, Mother: she hath slept this half-hour or more.”
“Poor child!” she saith. “If only I could have wist sooner! How much I might have saved her! O poor child!”
The water welled up in her eyes again, and she went away, something in haste. I had thought Mother should be angered, and I was something astonied to see how soft she were toward Milly. A while after, Aunt Joyce come in: but Milly slept on.
“I am fain to see that,” saith she, nodding her head toward the bed. “A good sign. Yet I would I knew exactly how she hath taken it.”
“I am afeared she may be angered, Aunt Joyce, to be thus served of one she trusted.”
“I hope so much. ’Twill be the best thing she can be. The question is what she loved—whether himself or his flattering of herself. She’ll soon get over the last, for it shall be nought worser with her than hurt vanity.”
“Not the first, Aunt?”
“I do not know, Edith,” she saith, and crushed in her lips. “That hangs on what sort of woman she be. There shall be a wound, in either case: but with some it gets cicatrised over and sound again with time, and with other some it tarries an open issue for ever. It hangs all on the manner of woman.”
“What should it be with you, Aunt Joyce?” said I, though I were something feared of mine own venturesomeness.