“No, I didn’ know nothin’ ’tall ’bout it,” he said, turning away and reaching for his hat, but with such nerveless hand that he almost dropped it before placing it on his head.
“If you’re going to the house,” Hosmer called after him, “tell Melicent that Woodson won’t go for her trunks before morning. She thought she’d need to have them ready to-night.”
“Yes, if I go to the house. I don’ know if I’m goin’ to the house or not,” he replied, walking listlessly away.
Hosmer looked after the young man, and thought of him for a moment: of his soft voice and gentle manner—perplexed that he should be the same who had expressed in confidence the single regret that he had not been able to kill Joçint more than once.
Grégoire went directly to the house, and approached that end of the veranda on which Melicent’s room opened. A trunk had already been packed and fastened and stood outside, just beneath the low-silled window that was open. Within the room, and also beneath the window, was another trunk, before which Melicent kneeled, filling it more or less systematically from an abundance of woman’s toggery that lay in a cumbrous heap on the floor beside her. Grégoire stopped at the window to tell her, with a sad attempt at indifference:
“Yo’ brotha says don’t hurry packin’; Woodson ain’t goin’ to come fur your trunks tell mornin’.”
“All right, thank you,” glancing towards him for an instant carelessly and going on with her work.
“I didn’ know you was goin’ away.”
“That’s absurd: you knew all along I was going away,” she returned, with countenance as expressionless as feminine subtlety could make it.
“W’y don’t you let somebody else do that? Can’t you come out yere a w’ile?”