To Florence the house was nothing else than a shelter from herself. In its restrained atmosphere, hemmed in by the monotonous, dripping rain, it was easier to lose emotion, to keep a quiet pulse; easier also to perceive in what direction these people, forced into constant conjunction of contradictory motives, would turn circumstance. However strongly she herself desired to mold it, she felt that now she must leave it alone. Even the fact of Cissy Fitz Hugh’s persistent hovering in Julia’s vicinity, mischievous as it looked, might only serve to shape events the faster.
Undoubtedly Cissy meant mischief, and though in sticking herself so fast to Julia she was more adroit than Florence had thought possible, her lack of imagination limited her. She annoyed the girl like a buzzing insect. Julia tried to shake her off. But Cissy had intrenched herself in a cast-iron sweetness that no impatience could ruffle, no rebuff shatter.
She had a very sharp eye on her cousin Thair. She suspected him. She couldn’t get at him. That illuminating talk of theirs over the breakfast-table had given her a clue. Longacre did have a fancy for Florence Essington! Cissy imagined every man had a fancy for herself until it was proved otherwise. Well, now it was proved otherwise; but as long as a man was within reach she felt him securable. But Thair had suggested Julia. This was troublesome! Julia was a beauty. Julia must be kept off, dragged off, until she could finally be scared away.
It was only while strolling in the conservatory with her arm around Julia’s waist, or playing Julia’s accompaniments—an office Longacre uneasily avoided—that Cissy felt at all safe. She was dropping hints all round the margin of what she wanted to say. But Julia was too absorbed in new, mysterious emotions to regard her manœuvers. She simply didn’t see them. Her abstraction was exasperating to Cissy, who was afraid to go too far. She had once seen Julia angry. She realized that the right hint, properly dropped, would comfortably bridge her difficulty. But having it, how to get neatly across? That was the point. As usual, she fell in with a splash.
Toward the end of the second afternoon of storm, with the rain clattering on the west front of the glass room, she followed in Julia’s wake up and down among the fragile ferns. The girl’s eyes were earnestly on the flowers, but Cissy’s were everywhere—toward the window, as if expecting to see some one in the garden; prying through the curtain chinks; then, with a quick peer of curiosity, following a shadow that through the half-open door she saw crossing the library floor. Then the piano answered to compelling fingers.
It had sounded much through the past two days, but now it spoke. Julia lifted her head as if it had spoken to her. She did not look over her shoulder, but frowned out into the rain, and presently went on trimming her plants. Cissy, peeping between the spikes of a dwarf palm saw through the glass the outline of a man seated, of a woman standing, her hand poised at the music-sheet on the rack. Presently she began singing, but singing with a half-voice, as if she listened, following him like an accompaniment. There was something accustomed, attuned, in their relative positions, as if they had fallen into them naturally through long habit. The significance of this touched even Cissy’s thick sensibility, but only as being the very thing she wanted.
“How absorbed those people are!” she observed, with a casual nod toward the glass doors behind her.
Julia gave a glance that seemed not to have noticed them before.
“Mrs. Essington plays very well herself,” she threw out carelessly.
“Oh, no!” Cissy assured her. “Only a very little. But she’s so awfully interested in his work—such an inspiration to him in every way!”