She looked up at him sharply from the hearthrug where she had flung herself down to stir the fire, and he stroked his moustache hurriedly.
"I am not laughing, Joan. I came to take you back to Norah—to be cheered up."
"Oh. It was very kind of you—both. How is the baby?" said she, turning a log dexterously over on its side and making the sparks fly up the chimney and send a red glow over her face.
"The baby is—ah—quiescent. Mrs. Haxtell is not. I think on the whole you had better not go there for amusement. My family affairs are only funny from the outside just at present. I think you had better give me your new ideas instead. What have you been thinking about all day?"
"That is what I am going to tell you." She stood up and leaned against the mantelshelf, and looked over his head at the bookshelves on the wall. "First of all, I hated myself for a whole hour. I thought I had got outside myself and was looking at myself like—oh, like another woman would look at me, Norah for instance. And I didn't enjoy myself for that hour at all. I almost made up my mind to go abroad again; but it was lunchtime, and over the mayonnaise, which was particularly good to-day, I came to the conclusion that it was like running away, and everybody would say I had gone 'to get over it,' and I could not tolerate that for a moment, could I?"
"Of course not, no. I know I may smoke, mayn't I? And then?"
"Then—" she made an effort not to alter her voice, and exaggerated its pitch in the attempt, "oh, then it became very apparent from the attitude of all the servants that they had heard the news about—Jack. That is to say, Thomas spoke to me in a whisper at lunch, and never handed me anything twice, and the coachman never sent up for orders at all, and I only just stopped the maids in time from pulling down all the blinds, and Mrs. Binks has been drinking tea in the servants' hall in her black silk dress ever since three o'clock, and did not answer my bell until I rang the second time, and then she appeared with a clean handkerchief in her hand, and a face as long as a fiddle. Aren't servants fond of a tragedy? And am I very heartless to notice all these things, Digby?"
"Heartless? No," he said with emphasis, remembering what his wife had said in the inn; "and after lunch, please?"
"Oh, after lunch I went to sleep. And when I woke up I felt better. I was able to think without getting sentimental over it. Don't you see, it is like this. There isn't anybody."
"I don't understand," said the musician.