“It’s unfortunate,” he said, looking around the circle of faces, each one frozen with amazement, and just a suspicion, perhaps of incredulity. “It’s particularly unfortunate for her. You all know how high-strung she is, and if the papers should get hold of it—well, we’ll all have to make it as easy as we can for her.”
With Jim’s eyes on them, they all swallowed the butler story without a gulp. But Anne was indignant.
“It’s like Bella,” she snapped. “Well, she has made her bed and she can lie on it. I’m sure I shan’t make it for her. But if you want to know my opinion, Mr. Harbison may be a fool, but you can’t ram two Bellas, both NEE Knowles, down Miss Caruthers’ throat with a stick.”
We had not thought of that before and every one looked blank. Finally, however, Jim said Bella’s middle name was Constantia, and we decided to call her that. But it turned out afterward that nobody could remember it in a hurry, and generally when we wanted to attract her attention, we walked across the room and touched her on the shoulder. It was quicker and safer.
The name decided, we went downstairs in a line to welcome Bella, to try to make her feel at home, and to forget her deplorable situation. Leila had worked herself into a really sympathetic frame of mind.
“Poor dear,” she said, on the way down. “Now don’t grin, anybody, just be cordial and glad to see her. I hope she doesn’t cry; you know the spells she takes.”
We stopped outside the door, and everybody tried to look cheerful and sympathetic, and not grinny—which was as hard as looking as if we had had a cup of tea—and then Jim threw the door open and we filed in.
Bella was comfortably reading by the fire. She had her feet up on a stool and a pillow behind her head. She did not even look at us for a minute; then she merely glanced up as she turned a page.
“Dear me,” she said mockingly, “what a lot of frumps you all are! I had hoped it was some one with my breakfast.”
Then she went on reading. As Leila said afterward, that kind of person OUGHT to be divorced.