He took the book abruptly, almost as if she had no right to be holding it. Then, as he saw the letter, the color rushed into his face. He took it, and after a moment's hesitation walked to the window and opened it.
She saw him waver, and ran to his support. But he put out a hand which checked her.
"It was the last thing he wrote," he said; and then, uncertainly, and without reading any but the first words of the letter, he put it into his pocket.
Julie drew back, humiliated. His gesture said that to a secret so intimate and sacred he did not propose to admit his wife.
They went back silently to the room from which they had come. Sentence after sentence came to Julie's lips, but it seemed useless to say them, and once more, but in a totally new way, she was "afraid" of the man beside her.
She left him shortly after, by his own wish.
"I will lie down, and you must rest," he said, with decision.
So she bathed and dressed, and presently she allowed the kind, fair-haired Susan to give her food, and pour out her own history of the death-week which she and Jacob had passed through. But in all that was said, Julie noticed that Susan spoke of her brother very little, and of his inheritance and present position not at all. And once or twice she noticed a wondering or meditative expression in the girl's charming eyes as they rested on herself, and realized that the sense of mystery, of hushed expectancy, was not confined to her own mind.
When Susan left her at nine o'clock, it was to give a number of necessary orders in the house. The inquest was to be held in the morning, and the whole day would be filled with arrangements for the double funeral. The house would be thronged with officials of all sorts. "Poor Jacob!" said the sister, sighing, as she went away.