"What is he there for?" he said. "What do you mean?"
Richard thrust his hands in his pockets. For a moment he seemed to have lost all his grace and refinement of charm,—for the moment he was a distinctly coarse and undraped human being.
"He has gone to make an evening call," he said. "And if she manages him as well as she has managed him before,—as well as she can manage any man she chooses to take in hand, and yet not give him more than a smile or so,—your investment, if you make it, may not turn out such a bad one."
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Bertha had spent the greater part of the day with her children, as she had spent part of many days lately. She had gone up to the nursery after breakfast to see Jack and Janey at their lessons, and had remained with them and given herself up to their entertainment. She was not well; the weather was bad; she might give herself a holiday, and she would spend it in her own way, in the one refuge which never failed her.
"It is always quiet here," she said to herself. "If I could give up all the rest—all of it—and spend all my days here, and think of nothing else, I might be better. There are women who live so. I think they must be better in every way than I am—and happier. I am sure I should have been happier if I had begun so long ago."
And as she sat, with Janey at her side, in the large chair which held them both, her arm thrown round the child's waist, there came to her a vague thought of what the unknown future might form itself into when she "began again." It would be beginning again when the sea was between the new life and the old; everything would be left behind—but the children. She would live as she had lived in Virginia, always with the children—always with the children. "It is the only safe thing," she thought, clasping Janey closer. "Nothing else is safe for a woman who is unhappy. If one is happy one may be gay, and look on at the world with the rest; but there are some who must not look on—who dare not."
"Mamma," said Janey, "you are holding me a little too close, and your face looks—it looks—as if you were thinking."