Although she had entered this room many times since her grandmother’s death she had always avoided glancing at the bed, fearing her lively imagination would project a vision of the old lady, high on her pillows.
She stood for a moment beside the bed after she had dismissed the nurse, wondering if she would always see Eustace there in the future. What a contrast! Her grandmother had looked a hundred. Eustace, the blood drained out of his face, narrowing his contours, looked years younger than his age. Almost a youth, in spite of his beard. Pathetic. No doubt, if she loved him she would be yearning over him with those maternal sensations authors of fiction were always reminding the reader—who should know the lesson by heart—surged up in every woman as soon as she fell in love. Well, she didn’t feel maternal a bit, but she certainly felt sorry for him. Elsie could do the maternalizing. Why didn’t she come?
But Elsie had telephoned to Polly, who was with her at that moment.
“I didn’t want Geoff to marry you,” she was saying. “I don’t mind telling you that. But Gita shan’t have him. I’d rather see him dead.”
“Gita?” Polly, who was sitting on the desk in the study swinging her feet, thrilled by the tragic tale of which Elsie had given her a bare hint on the telephone, almost fell off. She had responded to the urgent summons because she knew that Geoffrey was in Atlantic City, but although she had listened agape to the recital, she had merely assumed that Elsie was giving her an inside seat; certainly her due. “I don’t understand.”
“Oh, she’s in love with him and he with her. I’ve known it for some time.”
“Then mother was right,” muttered Polly, and although she rarely risked cutting lines on her lovely forehead, she frowned until her eyebrows met. “But it’s hard to believe it.”
“She’s only recently waked up to the fact—I can’t say just when—I’ve felt it in the air. He’s been interested from the first; that’s the reason he stayed away from her in town. I’ve seen a good deal of him this last winter—stayed with him, you remember. I soon discovered she was haunting him; and something must have happened the night of your mother’s party, for I took lunch with him next day and he was as nervous as a cat and wouldn’t let me mention Gita’s name——”
“I know!” And Polly repeated the shrewd observations of her mother.
“There you are! I don’t propose to have my brother’s life ruined. I don’t know what Eustace will do after this. I should think he’d never want to see her again, but possibly he may be more infatuated with her than ever, go on trying to win her. Fiction-writers are the complete morons where their own love-affairs are concerned. But he might consent to divorce her, and then Geoffrey would see no further reason for standing aside. That is if he could still love a woman who tried to murder her husband—but when men are mad about a woman’s black eyes——”