The Hollow of Her Hand

by George Barr McCutcheon

"All right. I'll wait."

Sara Wrandall returned to New York at the end of the month, and Leslie met her at the dock, as he did on an occasion fourteen months earlier. Then she came in on a fierce gale from the wintry Atlantic; this time the air was soft and balmy and sweet with the kindness of spring. It was May and the sea was blue, the land was green.

Again she went to the small, exclusive hotel near the Park. Her apartment was closed, the butler and his wife and all of their hastily recruited company being in the country, awaiting her arrival from town. Leslie attended to everything. He lent his resourceful man-servant and his motor to his lovely sister-in-law, and saw to it that his mother and Vivian sent flowers to the ship. Redmond Wrandall called at the hotel immediately after banking hours, kissed his daughter-in-law, and delivered an ultimatum second-hand from the power at home: she was to come to dinner and bring Miss Castleton. A little quiet family dinner, you know, because they were all in mourning, he said in conclusion, vaguely realising all the while that it really wasn't necessary to supply the information, but, for the life of him, unable to think of anything else to say under the circumstances. Somehow it seemed to him that while Sara was in black she was not in mourning in the same sense that the rest of them were. It seemed only right to acquaint her with the conditions in his household. And he knew that he deserved the scowl that Leslie bestowed upon him.

Sara accepted, much to his surprise and gratification. He had been rather dubious about it. It would not have surprised him in the least if she had declined the invitation, feeling, as he did, that he had in a way come to her with a white flag or an olive branch or whatever it is that a combative force utilises when it wants to surrender in the cause of humanity.

Leslie was a very observing person. It might have been said of him that he was always on the lookout for the things that most people were unlikely to notice: the trivial things that really were important. He not only took in his father's amiable blunder, but caught the curious expression in Hetty's dark blue eyes, and the sharp almost inaudible catch of her breath. The gleam was gone in an instant, but it made an impression on him. He found himself wondering if the girl was a snob as well as the rest of them. The look in her eyes betrayed unmistakable surprise and—yes, he was quite sure of it—dismay when Sara accepted the invitation to dine. Was it possible that the lovely Miss Castleton considered herself—but no! Of course it couldn't be that. The Wrandalls were good enough for dukes and duchesses. Still he could not get beyond the fact that he HAD seen the look of disapproval. 'Gad, thought he, it was almost a look of appeal. He made up his mind, as he stood there chatting with her, that he would find out from Vivian what his mother had done to create an unpleasant estimate of the family in the eyes of this gentle, refined cousin of old Lord Murgatroyd.

He was quite as quick to detect the satirical smile in Sara's frank, amused eyes as she graciously accepted the invitation to the home whose doors had only been half-open to her in the past. It scratched his pride a bit to think of the opinion she must have of the family, and he was inexpressibly glad that she could not consistently class him with the others. He found himself feeling a bit sorry for the old gentleman, and hoped that he missed the touch of irony in Sara's voice.

Old Mr. Wrandall floundered from one invitation to another.

"Of course, Sara, my dear, you will want to go out to the cemetery to-morrow, I shall be only too ready to accompany you. We have erected a splendid—"

"No, thank you, Mr. Wrandall," she interrupted gently. "I shall not go to the cemetery."

Leslie intervened. "You understand, don't you, father?" he said, rather out of patience.