I jumped—I couldn't help it.
"Wh—what?" I gasped. What a horrible thing—like a bomb thrown into the quiet room!
"Yes," he said placidly, "sounds queer to you, doesn't it? Well, it is queer, I guess."
It was with the greatest difficulty that I held myself to my chair. My throat went perfectly dry, suddenly, and if I did not scream, it was merely because I have a fairly strong will and a horror of making a scene. The little room had turned dreadful to me, all at once—dreadful and unnatural; Absolom Vail, in his pepper-and-salt, a nightmare.
He seemed to read my thoughts and put his hand out reassuringly.
"Oh, I don't think she's dead, now!" he explained, "I'm not so crazy as all that comes to! Goodness, no!"
"Oh...," I faltered, soothed in spite of myself by his kindly smile.
"No, no. It was this way."
He leaned forward slightly and tapped the arms of his chair rhythmically.
"After mother left me, there wasn't much to keep going for, you see. Then Irene, she went off, and though she was mighty kind about it, and there'd always be a room for me, and all that, and I liked Hannibal well enough, still, I'd never be happy in Italy. Hannibal saw it himself. In a good many ways Hannibal used to see what I meant, now and again—funny, wasn't it, with him so foreign? You'd have thought Barkington, now ... but that's neither here nor there.