The front door opened. Edred came in, rang the hand-bell on the table in the passage. Pamela heard voices—a little deprecating cackle, a man’s voice subdued to a cautious bass growl. Unable to bear any more, she started up, threw back the door, and advanced into the passage. As she did so, the deep rose-color of Nettie’s cotton gown whisked out of sight into the kitchen. She went, her head high on her throat, into the drawing-room, and Edred followed.
Fate seemed to decide that her moments of decided comedy or tragedy should be played in that room: the room with the ugly grate and marble mantelpiece which Jethro’s father had put in to make the place smart for Gainah; with the painted milking-stools and fretwork brackets and cheap embroideries which she had herself brought from Liddleshorn.
The roses in the blue bowls were drooping, candle-grease had dropped on to the keys of the piano, the open door of the china closet displayed dusty shelves and a floor on which the gay red-and-blue rugs were kicked up. Pamela saw these things; they reminded her sharply of the change that of late had come over her. She no longer took a housewifely pride in anything; her life was occupied in playing cat, with Nancy and Edred for mice.
“Are you going to marry Nancy?” she asked abruptly.
“Are you going to marry Jethro?” he returned aptly.
“I—I suppose so. And yet, when it comes to the point—— Everything depends on you.”
She looked at him again in an appealing way.
“We’re in a bit of a mess,” he said, shrugging his thin shoulders and impatiently pulling the fine points of his black mustache.
She hunched her shoulders and clenched her hands between her knees as if she were in actual physical pain.
“Oh! why did you come?” she moaned.