“I am very sorry for her,” answered the girl gravely. “I feel certain that she has had some very great sorrow—”
“Why, yes, her husband’s death,” suggested Rudolph.
“Oh, yes, that of course,” assented Mabin, surprised to find that the universal doubts whether Mrs. Dale really was a widow had infected her also. “But something even more than that, I should think. I have an idea that there is something tragic in her story, if one only knew it.”
Rudolph said nothing to this, but he looked at his companion with a quick glance of surprise, as if he himself shared her opinion, and was astonished to find it echoed.
They were under the portico now, and as their footsteps sounded on the stone, they saw through the open door into the dark hall and heard Mrs. Dale’s soft voice calling to them.
“It takes ever so much longer to get a thing done than to do it one’s self!” she exclaimed brightly, with a sigh, as she came out of the room on the left, and invited them to go in. “I could have brought Miss Rose in in half the time, even if she had fought to get away. Did she fight?” went on Mrs. Dale with arch innocence.
They were in the room by this time, and Mabin, coming in out of the glare of the sun, stood for a few seconds without seeing anything. Then her hands were gently taken, and she found herself pushed into a low chair.
“Bring her some strawberries, Mr. Bonnington,” said Mrs. Dale. “By the by, I may as well remark that I don’t intend to call you Mr. Bonnington very long. I shall drop into plain ‘Rudolph’ very soon, if only to give a fresh shock to the neighborhood, to whom I am Shocker in ordinary.”
“The sooner the better. I can’t understand anybody’s being Mr. Bonnington but my father. Now he looks equal to the dignity, while I don’t. I always feel that there is a syllable too many for me, and that people despise me in consequence.”
Mabin, who had recovered the use of her eyes, felt rather envious. The quick give and take of light talk like this was so different from the solemn conversations carried on at home, where her father laid down the law and everybody else agreed with him, that she felt this levity, while pleasant and amusing, to be something which would have caused the good folk at home to look askance.