Fanny turned the coat over in her lap, and looked down helplessly at a stain on the collar, that she had been endeavoring to remove; at the same time pushing aside with patient repetition the wisp of hair that kept falling over her cheek.
“Belle Worthington’ll be here before we know it; her and her husband and that Lucilla of hers. David knows how Belle Worthington is, just as well as I do; there’s no use saying he don’t. If she was to see a speck of dirt in this house or on David’s clothes, or anything, why we’d never hear the last of it. I got a letter from her,” she continued, letting the coat fall to the floor, whilst she endeavored to find her pocket.
“Is she coming to visit you?” asked Thérèse who had taken up a feather brush, and was dusting and replacing the various ornaments that were scattered through the room.
“She’s going down to Muddy Graw (Mardi-Gras) her and her husband and Lucilla and she’s going to stop here a while. I had that letter—I guess I must of left it in the other room.”
“Never mind,” Thérèse hastened to say, seeing that her whole energies were centered on finding the letter.
“Let me look,” said Hosmer, making a movement towards the bedroom door, but Fanny had arisen and holding out a hand to detain him she went into the room herself, saying she knew where she’d left it.
“Is this the reason you’ve kept yourself shut up here in the house so often?” Thérèse asked of Hosmer, drawing near him. “Never telling me a word of it,” she went on, “it wasn’t right; it wasn’t kind.”
“Why should I have put any extra burden on you?” he answered, looking down at her, and feeling a joy in her presence there, that seemed like a guilty indulgence in face of his domestic shame.
“Don’t stay,” Thérèse said. “Leave me here. Go to your office or over to the house—leave me alone with her.”
Fanny returned, having found the letter, and spoke with increased vehemence of the necessity of having the house in perfect trim against the arrival of Belle Worthington, from whom they would never hear the last, and so forth.