"I shall have a letter in the morning," she said to her cousin, several times; and after that she did not care to talk, but sat for hours busy with her thoughts, which seemed not altogether sad.
At eleven o'clock next morning, Arnold Jacks was announced. Irene, who sat with Olga in the drawing-room, had directed that her visitor should be shown into the library, and there she received him. Arnold stepped eagerly towards her; not smiling indeed, but with the possibility of a smile manifest in every line of his countenance. There could hardly have been a stronger contrast with his manner of the day before yesterday. For this Irene had looked. Seeing precisely what she expected, her eyes fell; she gave a careless hand; she could not speak.
Arnold talked, talked. He said the proper things, and said them well; to things the reverse of proper, not so much as the faintest reference. This duty discharged, he spoke of the house he had taken; his voice grew animated; at length the latent smile stole out through his eyes and spread to his lips. Irene kept silence. Respecting her natural sadness, the lover made his visit brief, and retired with an air of grave satisfaction.
CHAPTER XXVI
Olga knew that by her mother's death she became penniless. The income enjoyed by Mrs. Hannaford under the will of her sister in America was only for life by allowing a third of it to her husband, she had made saving impossible, and, as she left no will, her daughter could expect only such trifles as might legally fall to her share when things were settled. To her surviving parent, the girl was of course no more than a stranger. It surprised no one that Lee Hannaford, informed through the lawyers of what had happened, simply kept silence, leaving his wife's burial to the care of Dr. Derwent.
Three days of gloom went by; the funeral was over; Irene and her cousin sat together in their mourning apparel, not simply possessed by natural grief, but overcome with the nervous exhaustion which results from our habits and customs in presence of death. Olga had been miserably crying, but was now mute and still; Irene, pale, with an expression of austere thoughtfulness, spoke of the subject they both had in mind.
"There is no necessity to take any step at all—until you are quite yourself again—until you really wish. This is your home; my father would like you to stay."
"I couldn't live here after you are married," replied the other, weakly, despondently.
Irene glanced at her, hung a moment on the edge of speech, then spoke with a self-possession which made her seem many years older than her cousin.