She looked up at him smiling, but perfunctorily, as a grown-up smiles at a child, concealing her real feeling.
"Oh, so satisfied with you and the home, Tris. But I wish mother hadn't welcomed us. She makes me sick to the heart the way she talks about father. I don't want to hate her—and yet sometimes I can't help myself. And I didn't want our first day here to be spoilt by hatred. It's like a bad omen."
He was silent for a moment. Had she been looking at him she might have seen the faint change which passed over his features. It was a change that had come to them more than once during these two months among the hills—a kind of troubled perplexity—of uneasiness.
"Anne, I'm not satisfied with your mother," he began suddenly. "I don't like the look of her. I believe she's hiding something from us——"
She interrupted him with an impatient, scornful gesture.
"It's just her way. She's always imagining there's something the matter with her. When father was almost dying, she worried the doctor about a petty ailment of her own. I think she does it to cover the way she behaves——"
"Aren't you a wee bit hard on her?"
"Hard? Tris, surely it's right to be hard sometimes? One can't be lenient towards what's wrong. And it is wrong to be cruel, and our duty is towards the sick and sorrowful, no matter what they've done. Don't you think so?"
"Yes," he answered thoughtfully. "Perhaps our only duty."
She shook her head.