She stopped and put her hand across her eyes, rubbing them wearily. "I tell you these details merely to explain why I didn't get on to the fact sooner that she had gone out of the house—I was so absorbed in Howard. The door did slam, but just at that moment I was ... saying something to him. So I didn't really notice. Then, afterward, he and I talked and talked, until it was time for him to go home; and then we discovered—" She caught her breath and was silent for a moment.
Her mother was quite overcome. "So distressing for you, dear!"
Mrs. Holmes began to collect her gloves and bags.
"Poor Flora!" Fred said, unsteadily. "She was so unhappy. Oh—how unhappy women are!"
"That's because they are fools," said Mrs. Holmes.
"Oh, yes; we're fools, all right," Frederica said, somberly. Then she told them of that ride in the fog with the dead woman: "We had done everything we knew how, and we couldn't make her breathe; so I told Howard we must take her into Laketon, so we got her into the auto, and I held her—" There was a shuddering gasp from Mrs. Holmes; she was trying to get away, taking a backward step toward the door, then pausing, then taking another step. The horror of the thing gripped her. Weston saw her face growing gray under its powder. But still she listened, straining forward to hear distinctly.
Frederica was telling them of those terrible twenty minutes in the car, of the hour in the doctor's office, of the search for the coroner, of the drive to the undertaker's—then, suddenly, a curious thing happened: Mrs. Holmes, her face rigid, her false teeth faintly chattering, came up to her granddaughter and tapped her sharply on the shoulder.
"I could have done it, too, when I was a girl," she said, harshly; "but"—her voice broke into a whisper—"not now. I would be afraid, now." Then loudly, "I'm proud of you! You are no fool."
Frederica gave her an astonished look: "Why, grandmother!" It was as if a stranger had spoken to her—but a stranger who might be a friend.
The next instant Mrs. Holmes was herself again. "It's all too horrid," she said.