“Your husband is dead, I suppose?” Again the curious look, but no answer. I repeated my question.
“I reckon he is dead, ma’am,” she replied in a low voice. “Yigh, I met say I know he’s dead. It’s thirty-five year sin’ he went—he mun be dead.”
“Did he not die here, then?”
“Nay, ma’am, he wur a sailor. He deed at say on jest sich a night as this. He deed, and he thought on me.”
The smile which I had seen once before, which held so much of love, and yet had in it a suggestion of fear, hovered about her lips again for a moment, and was gone.
“Tay’s drawed nice now,” she said in a different tone. “Will yo’ please to pull up, ma’am?” motioning me to draw my chair nearer the table. “I’ve soom leet cake here as I’ll toast in a minute, but I have na’ a bit o’ butter, I’m sorry to tell yo’; yo’ mun mak’ shift wi’out.”
As I murmured my thanks for the generosity with which she had set before me the best her house contained, and emphatically assured her that I infinitely preferred light cake without butter, my hostess reseated herself in her elbow-chair, and gazed at me, while I ate and drank, with evident satisfaction. But she did not speak, and each furtive glance that I sent in her direction increased my curiosity.
It was such a handsome face, with its great dark eyes, its still beautiful colouring, its expression of reserved strength, of patience, of—what was it? Expectation or longing? A little of both, perhaps, but all placid and contained.
“You must be very lonely,” I said, pushing away my cup at length, and leaning back in my chair. She looked up quickly, sighed, and suffered her hands to drop together in her lap.
“I am that,” she said, half to herself.