“I’ve kept you waiting!” he exclaimed hurriedly. “You must forgive me this time, dear! I hope you haven’t waited dinner?”
As he spoke, he came over and kissed her cheek, without apparently perceiving the anguish in her eyes. She yielded, let him caress her soft hair a moment, but she was trying, all the while, to shape the questions that rushed to her lips.
Something in his face, in its stricken look, stopped her. She drew back and went to the table. It had been set for two by the maid, and the belated dinner announced itself by the savory odor of cooking from the kitchen.
“Of course I waited,” Diane said in a dull voice. She herself was startled at the sound of it, it seemed so changed; and yet he did not notice it. “We’d better sit down at once. I know Annie wants to go home before it gets any later.”
He assented readily, still unobservant, and they were already seated when the maid brought in the soup and busied herself serving them. While she was there, Diane felt the need of seeming as gay as usual. She inquired for news of New York, and asked if he had telephoned to her father.
“I left that for you. I felt sure the judge wouldn’t want me to do it for you,” he replied without looking up. “For the rest—I saw Asher. The expedition has been delayed. If you wish it, Diane, we can stay here a little longer.”
She hesitated, and then, as the girl removed the tureen, she managed to say in a natural voice:
“I think I’d rather not. If—if we’re going at all, I want to stay with papa a while before we sail.”
He looked up for the first time.
“Why do you say ‘if’? What makes you uncertain?”