As Robert walked home—for there was no car due—he felt completely desolate. It seemed to him that everybody was in league against him. When he reached his uncle's splendid house and entered, he felt such an isolation from his kind in the midst of his wealth that something like an actual terror of solitude came over him.
The impecunious cousin of his aunt's who had come to her during her last illness acted as his housekeeper. There was something inexpressibly irritating about this woman, who had suffered so much, and was now nestling, with a sense of triumph over the passing of her griefs, in a luxurious home.
She asked Robert if it were true that the factory was closed, and he felt that she noted his gloomy face, and realized a greater extent of comfort from her own exemption from such questions.
“Business must be a great care,” said she, and a look of utter peaceful reflection upon her own lot overspread her face.
After supper Robert went down to his aunt Cynthia's. He had not been there for a long time. The minute he entered she started up with an eagerness which had been completely foreign to her of late years.
“What is the matter, Robert?” she asked, softly. She took both his hands as she spoke, and her look in his face was full of delicate caressing.
Robert succumbed at once to this feminine solicitude, of which he had had lately so little. He felt as if he had relapsed into childhood. A sense of injury which was exquisite, as it brought along with it a sense of his demand upon love and sympathy, seized him.
“I am worried beyond endurance, Aunt Cynthia,” said he.
“About the strike? I have read the night papers.”
“Yes; I tried to do what was right, even at a sacrifice to myself, and—”