It was a warm jacket for the little boy, who needed it. Mrs. Lawrence's coldness melted a little.
"Thank you," she said, "there is not much to be done on it now."
With that oblique persuasion, Anita took up the jacket, and her quick fingers made the needles fly. Her glance was keen, and although apparently concentrated on her work, she saw the strange mixture of plainness and luxury in the little room. The floor was covered with a fine rug, and a little glass cupboard shone with cut glass and silver.
The two women talked a little together but Mrs. Lawrence showed her weariness by falling off to sleep in the chair. The little boy went quietly out, and Anita sat knitting steadily in the silent room. The setting sun shone upon Mrs. Lawrence's pale face, revealing a beauty that neither time nor grief nor hardship could wholly destroy.
Involuntarily, Anita's eye travelled around the strange-looking room. On the mantel was a large photograph; Anita's heart leaped as she recognized it to be Broussard. It was evidently a fresh photograph, and a very fine one. Broussard stood in a graceful attitude, his hand on his sword, looking every inch the beau sabreur. Anita became so absorbed that her hand stopped knitting; it was as if Broussard himself had walked into the room.
Presently she felt, rather than saw, a glance fixed upon her. Mrs. Lawrence was wide awake, lying back in her chair, her dark eyes bent on Anita, whose hands lay idle in her lap.
The gaze of the two women met, for Anita was a woman grown in matters of the heart. She imagined she saw pity in Mrs. Lawrence's expression. Instantly, she began to knit rapidly. She wished to talk unconcernedly, but the words would not come. Broussard's association with the pallid woman before her was a painful mystery to Anita. Jealousy is a plant that springs from nothing, and grows like Jonah's gourd in the minds of women.
Anita was too innocent, too rashly confident in the honor of all the other women in the world to think any wrong of the woman before her. But it was enough that Mrs. Lawrence knew Broussard well, and was in communication with him—a strange thing between an officer and the wife of a private soldier, even if the soldier be of a station unusual in the ranks. Ever in Anita's heart smouldered the joy of the words Broussard had spoken to her under thousands of eyes on that memorable night of the music ride, and the sharp pain that came from Broussard's saying no more.
In a few minutes the jacket was done, and Anita rose. It required all her generosity as well as justice to say to Mrs. Lawrence:
"If I can do anything for you, please let me know."