“Only a week or two ago.”
Grace pushed her shawl more off her shoulders, and beat her knee up and down as she sat on the low stool. Suddenly she turned to Isaac.
“Had you no suspicion that anything was wrong?”
“Yes, a slight one,” he incautiously answered. “A doubt, though, more than a suspicion.”
Grace took up the admission warmly. “And you could hug the doubt slyly to yourself and never warn your father!” she indignantly uttered. “A fine son you are, Isaac Hastings!”
Isaac was of equable temperament. He did not retort on Grace that he had warned him, but that Mr. Hastings had not acted upon the hint; at least not effectually. “When my father blames me, it will be time enough for you to blame me, Grace,” was all he said in answer. “And—in my opinion—it might be just as well if you waited to hear whether Maria deserves blame, before you cast so much on her.”
“Pshaw!” returned Grace. “The thing speaks for itself.”
Had Grace witnessed the bitter sorrow, the prostration, the uncertainty in which her sister was sunk at that moment, she might have been more charitable in her judgment. Practical and straightforward herself, it would have been as impossible for Grace to remain ignorant of her husband’s affairs, pecuniary or else, as it was for her to believe that Maria Godolphin had remained so. And, if fully convinced that such had indeed been the fact, Grace would have deemed her state of contented ignorance to be little less than a crime. She and Maria were as essentially different as two people can well be. Pity but she could have seen Maria then!
Maria was in her dining-room. She had made a pretence of going down to dinner, not to excite the observation and remarks of the servants: in her excessive sensitiveness she could not bear that they should even see she was in grief. Grace, in her place, might have spoken openly and angrily before the household of the state of affairs. Not so Maria: she buried it all within her.
She could not eat. Toying with this plate and that plate, she knew not how to swallow a morsel or to make pretence of doing so, before the servants, standing by. But it came to an end, that dinner, and Maria was left alone.