(She has taken to oiling her hair, thought Ellen. She will be running a fruit stand soon.)
“I have heard the news.... I have heard the news.... You are to have a leetle baby.”
She sat down, her fat old face all soft and beaming now, her diamonds glittering dimly as they had always glittered.
“Did Richard tell you?” asked Ellen.
“I only landed yesterday.... I motored all the way from Le Havre. I did not know the news then. I only knew that you had run away from him. What is it? What has happened?”
Ellen, watching her, knew that in the recesses of her Oriental mind the old woman thought her a fool for running away. Thérèse believed that any woman could make a good wife. It was a woman’s duty to put up with anything, as Sabine had done until she was thrust aside as barren and useless. As Sabine had said, Thérèse could have protected herself from a man like Callendar. She had been born old and wise, expecting nothing. She could not argue with Thérèse. The old woman would have thought her crazy.
“I have left him,” she said. “I shall not go back.”
“Perhaps the baby....” And Thérèse put her head on one side in a queer foreign fashion and smirked. “Perhaps the baby will change things.” Then she leaned forward and patted Ellen’s hand. “Never mind, we won’t speak of it now, my darling.... It would disturb you ... in your condition.” She kept returning again and again to the idea of the baby.
Then, settling back in her chair, she took a biscuit from the reticule and began to nibble it. “We need not worry now,” she continued. “To think of it ... a baby ... a grandson.”
Ellen could not resist the perverse temptation. It was this old woman who, after all, had forced the marriage. She said, “Perhaps it will be a granddaughter.”