"I am so much obliged to you for all, sir," she gently said, as he shook hands with her. "Oh, and I beg your pardon for asking another question," she added as he was turning away. "I have been thinking that I ought perhaps to leave my situation and stay at home with my mother. I always meant to do so when she grew worse. Do you see any necessity for it?"
"Not yet. Later of course you must do it: and perhaps it might be as well that you should be at home to-morrow, though the people of the house are attentive to her. You may rely upon me to tell you when the necessity arrives."
"Thank you, Mr. Frank. Good-night."
"Good-night, Rose."
Frank held out his arm to his wife. She took it, and they walked home together. But this time she was very chary in answering any remark he made, and did not herself volunteer one. The interview she had just witnessed had only served to augment the sense of treason that filled the heart of Mrs. Frank Raynor.
[CHAPTER VII.]
MEETING AGAIN
Time flew on. Summer had come round again: and it was now close upon three years since Mrs. Raynor and her children had quitted Eagles' Nest. Certainly, affairs could not be said to be progressing with them. The past winter and spring had again brought trouble. The three younger children were attacked with scarlatina, and it had left Kate so long ill that much care had to be taken with her. Mrs. Raynor was laid up at the same time for several weeks with bronchitis; and the whole nursing fell upon Edina.
With so much on her hands, and Mrs. Raynor invalided, Edina could not continue to do the work which helped to keep them. A little of it she continued to take, but it was very little: and she had to sit up at night and steal hours from her rest to accomplish even so much. This did not please the people who supplied her with it; they evidently did not care to continue to supply her at all; and when things came round again, and she and Mrs. Raynor would have been glad to do the same quantity of work as before, the work was not forthcoming. Their employment failed.
Such, in these early days of June, was the state of affairs: the family pinching and starving more than ever, Charles wearing out his days at the office, Alice teaching at Mrs. Preen's. Never had the future looked so dark as it was looking now.