“That picnic of last week is being talked about, Alexina,” she said.
Alexina flushed, but she was honest. “It ought to be,” she said. Gaiety can tread close upon the heels of recklessness. But if Molly went the daughter had to go, for this very reason, though she could not tell Emily this.
So she spoke of other things. “Do you know anything of Uncle Austen?” she asked. “Is he still taking his meals down-town and sleeping at the house?”
Emily looked conscious. “Yes,” she said, “I think he is.”
Somehow Alexina felt that Emily not only knew but wanted it to be felt that she knew. Then why hesitate and say only that she thought so?
“How’s Garrard?” Alexina asked suddenly. Garrard was young Doctor Ransome. Emily flushed a little, but she answered unconcernedly, “Well enough, I reckon.”
On Alexina’s return to the hotel, the clerk stopped her in the corridor, looking a little embarrassed under the clear, surprised gaze of the young lady. “It’s about a little matter with Mrs. Garnier; it’s been running two months now.”
A moment after, as she went on blindly up the stairs, a folded paper in her hand, she understood; understood what Georgy had offered to share with her, what the taciturn secretiveness of Celeste meant. She went in through the parlour to her mother’s room, from which of late she had been so much shut out.
“Molly,” she said, her voice sounding strange to herself, as she held out the paper open.
Molly, risen on her pillow, looked at it, at her, her eyes growing big. She was frightened, and cowered a little, crumpling some letters in her lap.