"I had to send for you, Fred. You and Herbert Sydenham are the only two left who were close to me then, and Herbert Sydenham—well—" she laughed a laugh of exquisitely humorous pain—"Herbert would have forgotten me any time these twenty years for a striking color scheme, a streak of unpaintable moonshine. It was you, Fred, or no one, and it hurt me so! All last night I was on the rocks being ground to bits. I knew you would say the wise thing."
The big man had risen to walk the floor, his thick shoulders heaving as if to throw off invisible burdens, his head shaking doggedly.
"Yes, Kitty, yes—" His voice was big but low, the voice of his whole being bent to soothe. He came to her side and reached down to take one of the frail, blue-veined hands between his own two, huge and hairy. They closed upon hers with a kind of awkward effectiveness.
"Of course you had to come to me, but I'm afraid all I can do is to brace you."
"I wanted you to be with me. I couldn't have borne it alone, Fred—his being here—Kitty's child."
"And you say he doesn't know?"
"I'm certain of it, and Eleanor Laithe doesn't know; but those are little things when I know."
"We'll see, Kitty—we'll see. Perhaps I can help. But I suspect it's one of those matters where you must be your own guide. You'll act as you feel; not as I think—not even as you think."
"Ellen is going to the door," she whispered, almost fiercely, bracing herself in the chair.
As the maid held back the curtain at the doorway, Ewing advanced uncertainly, an embarrassed smile on his lips, the look of one who would be agreeable if he knew how. He saw Mrs. Lowndes stiffly fixed in her chair, her white-crowned head thrown back, and he would have taken her hand but she diverted him from this.