“Well, if she’d been doing it for over two years, I think I’d have got sort of broken to it by now,” she said. “What makes you so mad about it all of a sudden?”
“Maybe things aren’t just the same as they’ve been for the last two years,” said Berny darkly. “Maybe there’s a reason for Mrs. Ryan’s bowing to me.”
These words had the effect that the victim of the cut desired. Her sisters paused in their work and looked at her. There had been times lately when Hannah had felt uneasy about Berny’s fine marriage, and she now eyed the younger woman with sober intentness over the glasses pushed down toward the tip of her nose.
“Reason?” said Hazel. “What reason? Have you and she been trying to make up?”
“I don’t know whether you’d call it that or not,” said Berny.
“Have things really changed between you and her, Berny?” she asked gravely.
Hannah put down the shears and laid her hands on the table. She felt the coming revelations.
“Well, yes, I guess you’d say they have,” said Berny slowly, letting every word make its impression. “She’s trying to buy me off to leave Dominick. I suppose you’d call that a change.”
If Berny wanted to surprise her sisters, she certainly now had the satisfaction of realizing her hopes. For a moment they stared at her, too amazed to speak, even Hannah, who had scented difficulties, being completely unprepared—after the way of human nature—for the particular difficulty that had cropped up. It was Hazel who first spoke.
“Buy you off to leave Dominick? Give you money to go away from him, do you mean?”