Her mind clutched at this feeling and referred it to her father. It sent out towards him, wherever he might be, a convulsive emotional cry.
"You were wrong. I do care. Can't you see that I can never be happy again? Yet, if you could come back I would be happy. I wouldn't mind your—your little funny ways."
It wasn't true. She would mind them. If he were really there he would know it wasn't true.
She turned and looked again at the piano. She went to it. She opened the lid and sat down before it. Her fingers crept along the keyboard; they flickered over the notes of the Sonata Appassionata, a ghostly, furtive playing, without pressure, without sound.
And she was ashamed as if the piano were tempting her to some cruel, abominable sin.
XXII
I.
The consultation had lasted more than an hour.
From the cobbled square outside you could see them through the window, Mamma, Uncle Edward, Uncle Victor and Farmer Alderson, sitting round the dining-room table and talking, talking, talking about Roddy.
It was awful to think that things—things that concerned you—could go on and be settled over your head without your knowing anything about it. She only knew that Papa had made Uncle Victor and Uncle Edward the trustees and guardians of his children who should be under age at his death (she and Roddy were under age), and that Mamma had put the idea of farming in Canada into Uncle Edward's head, and that Uncle Victor had said he wouldn't hear of letting Roddy go out by himself, and that the landlord of the Buck Hotel had told Victor that Farmer Alderson's brother Ben had a big farm somewhere near Montreal and young Jem Alderson was going out to him in March and they might come to some arrangement.