'I really don't need a house, and lodgings are so wretched. These flats are a great blessing—don't you think? I shall manage here with one servant, only one.'
Rolfe struggled with the difficulty of not knowing what to say. There was nothing for it but to discourse as innocently as might be on the advantages of flats, their increasing popularity, and the special charms of this particular situation. Mrs. Frothingham eagerly agreed with everything, and did her best to allow no moment of silence.
'You have heard from Miss Frothingham, I think?' she presently let fall, with a return of anxiety.
'Not very long ago. From Leipzig.'
'Yes. Yes.—I don't know whether she will stay there. You know she is thinking of taking up music professionally?—Yes. Yes.—I do so hope she will find it possible, but of course that kind of career is so very uncertain. I'm not sure that I shouldn't be glad if she turned to something else.'
The widow was growing nervous and self-contradictory. With a quick movement of her hands, she suddenly resumed in another tone.
'Mr. Rolfe, I do so wish you would let me speak to you in confidence. I want to ask your help in a most delicate matter. Not, of course, about my step-daughter, though I shall have to mention her. It is something quite personal to myself. If I could hope that you wouldn't think it tiresome—I have a special reason for appealing to you.'
He would gladly, said Harvey, be of any use he could.
'I want to speak to you about painful things,' pursued his hostess, with an animation and emphasis which made her more like the lady of Fitzjohn Avenue. 'You know everything—except my own position, and that is what I wish to explain to you. I won't go into details. I will only say that a few years ago my husband made over to me a large sum of money—I had none of my own—and that it still belongs to me. I say belongs to me; but there is my trouble. I fear I have no right whatever to call it mine. And there are people who have suffered such dreadful losses. Some of them you know. There was a family named Abbott. I wanted to ask you about them. Poor Mr. Abbott—I remember reading——'
She closed her eyes for an instant, and the look upon her face told that this was no affectation of an anguished memory.