She would not for worlds that this man should know the extent of her ignorance about the woman who had borne her husband’s name. She spoke vaguely, hoping that he would take it for granted she knew all.
“Yes,” assented Castellani with a sigh, “her death was infinitely sad.”
He spoke as of an event of more than common sadness—a calamity that had been in somewise more tragical than untimely death must needs be.
Mildred kept silence, though her heart ached with shapeless forebodings, and though it would have been an unspeakable relief to know the worst rather than to feel the oppression of this mystery.
Castellani rose to take leave. He was paler than he had been before the conversation began, and he had a troubled air. Pamela looked at him with sympathetic distress. “I am afraid you are dreadfully tired,” she said, as they shook hands.
“I am never tired in this house,” he answered; and Pamela appropriated the compliment by her vivid blush.
Mildred shook hands with him mechanically and in silence. She was hardly conscious of his leaving the room. She rose and went out into the garden, while Pamela sat down to the piano and began singing her part in the everlasting duet. She never sang anything else nowadays. It was a perpetual carol of admiration for the author of Nepenthe.
“’Twere sweet to die as the roses die,
If I had but lived for thee;
’Twere sweet to fade as the twilight fades