She took no notice; but she wondered if any one could help noticing that, whereas Paul when he first appeared on the scene had been eager and animated over the home he hoped to form, and the life he meant to lead, he was listless and indifferent now. He assented to everything, initiated nothing. Sometimes he barely glanced at the attractive domain whose allurements were so cunningly set forth—sometimes he hung over the page so long that Leo could not help suspecting it was but a screen to hide his face.
He had lost altogether his pleasant habit of following each speaker with his eyes as the talk went round. The eyes would be glued to the floor, or fixed vacantly on some object. He would start when called to order for inattention, and thereafter be abjectly attentive.
But whatever Maud said was right, and her wishes were law. She could not make a suggestion which he was not ready to carry out; when she withdrew from it herself he as readily withdrew. To Leo, watching from the background, there was something unnatural, incomprehensible about it all—something which baffled her closest scrutiny—and yet at times made her feel as though the scrutiny itself were but foolishness, emanating from her own disordered imagination.
She would think so for a whole day, and school herself to believe that it was a happy day—and then something, some trifle, would occur which made her heart leap and her hands tremble, and she found herself talking for dear life in a meaningless jumble of words.
She would not, must not, dared not hope that Paul repented of his choice, unless it might be that repentance were mutual, in which case?
But after a night of fitful sleep and miserable awakenings, Leo would come down heavy-eyed and feverish, to find a prosaic, business-like dialogue being carried on by the very individuals who had figured so differently in the phantasms of the small hours, and her entrance would hardly be noticed by either, so engrossed were they by each other.
Once indeed she wondered whether Paul were not a trifle too ostentatiously engrossed? Whether it were the case that he really did not see her slip into the vacant chair, the only vacant chair at the table? His head was steadily turned the other way, but her sisters addressed her and still he perceived, or affected to perceive, no addition to the party. Was he, could he be afraid of her penetration? Did he suspect that it went further than was convenient?
Maud was unusually animated that morning. "It really fits in wonderfully, this plan of Aunt Charlotte's; and I must say I little expected her to be the one to come to the rescue."
"What is the plan?" inquired Leo aside of Sybil.
"Aunt Charlotte offers us her house for the winter." Sybil also looked excited and jubilant. "She is going abroad, and says she will leave us everything as it stands."