“You don’t suppose she has quarrelled with Harry, do you?”
“It is quite possible. It’s a way they have had ever since they were children together.”
“Still, it might be serious this time.”
“No fear of that,” said the mother easily. “Isabel thinks a great deal more of him than she has ever admitted, even to herself, perhaps. And as for Harry, I would as soon think of the world coming to an end as of his giving her up.”
Dorothy was silenced, but not convinced.
“That was one thing I wanted to speak about, mamma,” she said, gathering herself for the plunge; “but there is another. I want to know what has come over us all lately. We seem to be groping about in the dark, trying to hide things from each other. What is the mystery? and why can’t I share it?”
“Mystery? Nonsense, child! there is no mystery.”
But Dorothy was insistent. “Yes, there is. First, Mr. Brant does us a kindness and drops us, all in the same day. Then, when I wonder at it, you put me off, and father goes deaf, and Will gets angry. And when I ask Harry a civil question about his friend, he snaps me up only a little less savagely than brother. Now Isabel has turned blue and won’t talk, and—and, altogether we seem to be turning into a family of freaks. What is at the bottom of it all? Why doesn’t Mr. Brant come here any more?”
The mother’s smile would have been full of meaning for the daughter if the darkness had not hidden it.
“Mr. Brant probably has his own reasons for not coming, and they are doubtless very good ones.”