“I've got a right ugly piece of news,” he told her, masking the painful interest with which he followed her expression. “Martin Eckles was killed yesterday; shot out of the buggy.”
She grew pale, her breast rose in a sudden gasp and her hands were clenched.
“Oh!” she whispered, horrified.
But there was nothing in her manner beyond the natural detestation of such brutality; nothing, he saw, hidden.
“He wanted me to go away with him,” she swept on; “and get married in Stanwick. Martin wanted me to see the world. He said I ought to, and not stay here all my life.”
The misery that settled over her, the hopelessness dulling her youth filled him with a passionate resentment at the fate that made her what she was and seemingly condemned her to eternal denial. His love for her—Lucy, Hannah, Hannah, Lucy—was intolerably keen. He went to her, bending with a riven hand on the arm of her chair.
“Do you want Wilmer?” he demanded. “Do you love him truly? Is he enough?”
“I don't know.” Slow tears wet her cheeks. “I can't say. I ought to; he's good and faithful, and with some of me that's enough. But there's another part; I can't explain it except to say it's a kind of excitement for the life Mr. Eckles told us about, all those lights and restaurants and theaters. Sometimes I think I'll die, I want it so much; then it comes over me how ungrateful I am to you and Aunt Ettie, and I hate myself for the way I treat Wilmer.”
“Do you love him?” he insisted.
“Perhaps not like you mean.”