"Yes. I meant what I said a while ago. It was sure to happen to him one time or another. Sara's had a lot to put up with."
"Sara! If she had been the right sort of a wife, this never would have happened."
"After all is said and done, Vivie, Sara's in a position to rub it in on us if she's of a mind to do so. She won't do it, of course, but—I wonder if she isn't gloating, just the same."
"Haven't we treated her as one of us?" demanded she, dabbing her handkerchief in her eyes. "Since the wedding, I mean. Haven't we been kind to her?"
"Oh, I think she understands us perfectly," said her brother.
"I wonder what she will do now?" mused Vivian, in that speech casting her sister-in-law out of her narrow little world as one would throw aside a burnt-out match.
"She will profit by experience," said he, with some pleasure in a superior wisdom.
In Mrs. Wrandall's sitting-room at the top of the broad stairway, sat the family,—that is to say, the IMMEDIATE family,—a solemn-faced footman in front of the door that stood fully ajar so that the occupants might hear the words of the minister as they ascended, sonorous and precise, from the hall below. A minister was he who knew the buttered side of his bread. His discourse was to be a beautiful one. He stood at the front of the stairs and faced the assembled listeners in the hall, the drawing-room and the entresol, but his infinitely touching words went up one flight and lodged.
Sara Wrandall sat a little to the left of and behind Mrs. Redmond Wrandall, about whom were grouped the three remaining Wrandalls, father, son and daughter, closely drawn together. Well to the fore were Wrandall uncles and cousins and aunts, and one or two carefully chosen blood-relations to the mistress of the house, whose hand had long been set against kinsmen of less exalted promise.
The room was dark. A forgotten French clock ticked madly and tinkled its quarter-hours with surpassing sprightliness. Time went on regardless. One of the Wrandall uncles, obeying a look from his wife, tiptoed across the room and tried to find a way to subdue the jingling disturber. But it chimed in his face, and he put his black kid glove over his lips. The floor creaked horribly as he went back to his chair.