She walked through the crisp morning with her head high; for she was a woman, and it was sweet to know that she had, by his own confession, an influence over a man; that he had asked her help and that she, denying this, had agreed upon a middle ground on which it might be possible to meet and know him. He was less inexplicable to her now. Knowledge of his unpleasant reputation, gathered from newspapers and from chance remarks of ignorant gossips, filled her no longer with repugnance. She tried to recall, over and over again as she tramped toward the Institute, just what she had said to him about labour, and about her belief in it as a means of grace for him; but oftener still she remembered how he had held her hand against his face, not kissing it, for that would have been too much, but holding it against his cheek—her hand that had known labour! And thinking of this she smiled so that passers-by turned to look at the tall, dark girl, with her lifted head and face illumined by happiness.
At the Craighill house happiness was not so legibly written on the two faces at the breakfast table. Colonel Craighill was clearly troubled, and the urbanity with which he asked as to his wife’s health and the state of household affairs did not conceal the vexed undercurrent of his thoughts.
“What has Wayne been doing?” he inquired with a directness that for a moment disconcerted her.
“Oh, he has been in and out about as usual. I have not seen much of him. It was lonely in the house so I asked Miss Morley to stay with me. She’s an Art Institute student that I met at Fanny’s. Fanny has been called South, you know, by the illness of Mr. Blair’s mother.”
“Ah! I’m very sorry to hear that. So Fanny’s not at home.”
He finished his breakfast in silence and then, after a moment’s deliberation, began:
“I’m obliged, my dear Adelaide, to speak of a very unpleasant matter. Your mother persisted in calling on me at the Brodericks’, very greatly to my annoyance. I was amazed that she should be in Boston; I thought she had gone abroad.”
She was silent, wishing him to go on; she had wondered just how he would approach her on this subject.
“I was very greatly embarrassed, I need hardly tell you, to have her looking me up in that way. Very likely she has written you of her call. You may be sure that I was as courteous as possible, but her manner was not just what I should have liked to have my wife’s mother manifest toward me. I have rarely in my life been so pained by any occurrence.”
Some reply was necessary and Mrs. Craighill was prepared.