And she rushed out of the room without another word. Connie looked wistfully after her. Nora’s pain in receiving had stirred in her the shame-faced distress in giving that lives in generous souls. “Why should I have more than they?”
She stole out after Nora. Ewen Hooper was left staring at the letter from his bankers, and trying to collect his thoughts. Connie’s voice was still in his ears. It had all the sweetness of his dead sister’s.
Connie was reading in her room before dinner. She had shut herself up there, feeling rather battered by the emotions of the afternoon, when she heard a knock that she knew was Nora’s.
“Come in!”
Nora appeared. She had had her storm of weeping in private and got over it. She was now quite composed, but the depression, the humiliation even, expressed in her whole bearing dismayed Connie afresh.
Nora took a seat on the other side of the fire. Connie eyed her uneasily.
“Are you ever going to forgive me, Nora?” she said, at last.
Nora shrugged her shoulders.
“You couldn’t help it. I see that.”