Eve had returned the next day, and Emily had been glad, feeling that Eve would be a protection. The girls had gone together to spend the week-end at Geneva with friends. That had been planned days ago. Bob had remarked uneasily, looking up from the daily at noon on Monday:
"That bird's in Geneva, Emily!"
"Who?"
"Quin, that brother-in-law of Eve's."
"Why shouldn't he be?" Emily had asked, carelessly. And she asked herself the same question, but not so carelessly. What was more natural than that he should have gone fishing? Didn't everybody go fishing? Wasn't there a long list in the paper every Monday of all the men from the town who had gone, even though they went regularly every Saturday of the season? The editor had to have something to fill up his columns, and that list, and the list of those who went to Chicago daily to shop, could always be depended upon. Still——
Afterwards she sometimes thought that she should have said to Martha: "Did you see Mr. Quin at Geneva? Did you know he was going to be there?" She might have asked that question the following Wednesday. Perhaps that was where she had made her great mistake. She should have asked Martha directly what had happened there.
For Eve came home that day from the links alone, and announced she was going to Chicago at once to her father; that she had thought when she came to live in this town that at least she wouldn't have her sister hanging around, and her brother-in-law. She wasn't going to come back till they cleared out, she said, angrily red. Afterwards Emily knew that she ought to have asked her exactly what the quarrel had been about. She had, however, practically asked Martha later. Martha had said indifferently she supposed Eve was tired of the little town. It wasn't good enough for her, perhaps. She had spoken sarcastically. She didn't regret Eve's departure. She had gone on her way undisturbed. Perhaps she had spent more time with her friends than she usually did. At home she was quiet; but she had always been that. She had always sat excited, as it were, by her thoughts, chuckling to herself about what was in her mind. Her Uncle Jim had said of her child that it was herself she seemed always to be enjoying. She had seemed to have a hidden source of delight to muse on. Johnnie was no longer about the house. When Emily commented on this fact, Martha had explained indifferently that he had an awful case on a De Kalb girl.
One afternoon Emily sat talking to an old, trustworthy friend. "When's Eve coming back? You know her sister?" Grace Phillips had asked.
Emily couldn't believe she had asked it in malice. She thought afterwards it might have been a well-meant warning. Emily had said she had not even seen the sister. She wasn't receiving callers.
"You see more of him, I suppose?"