“Ever since that night; except cold water, she has not had bite or sup in her lips for the last five days.”
“Where are the children?”
“I asked some of the neighbours to take them till—till—it was all over.”
There was an instant’s break in her voice. Next minute it was cold and hard and ringing as ever.
In the small ante-room where Mr. Brady had received the Rileys, Grace found tea prepared, and she sat down to it with what appetite she might.
She had been delicately nurtured, and the cup of coarse blue delft, the dark brown sugar, the battered tray, the black-handled knife, the smoked teapot, repelled her the moment she set eyes on the repast.
But she forced herself to eat. She had come to be useful, and she was determined to let no fastidious niceties cumber her at first starting. Her greatest trial was the woman, who after a grudging fashion strove to make her welcome. Grace’s experience had never previously brought her even mentally in contact with a person of the kind, but her instinct told her there was something wrong about dark eyes and darker hair; that if everything were right she and Nettie ought not to be under the same roof, with a person against whom every nerve seemed to be at war, whose very presence was a trial, whose interest in the late master of Maryville had evidently been very close and very great. By the light of the solitary candle with which her banquet-table was illumined, Grace, quick as is the nature of her sex, took in the personal appearance and attire of the solitary domestic Maryville seemed to boast.
Not an ill-looking woman; but hard, bold, bad—bad decidedly—one with whom wickedness had not prospered. Grace looked at her poor brown-stuff gown, scanty and ill-fitting, but covering a magnificent figure; at the poor attempt at mourning made in a little black neckerchief drawn round her throat and pinned in front of the half-high dress; at her hands red and hard with work, to grasp, dimly it might be but sufficiently, the fact sin had not paid this creature high wages for the loss of all women hold dear.
The man was dead. She had wanted to ask many questions, but with this idea before her and others looming behind, Grace could ask no question of her companion, who, comprehending that without a word of explanation the other knew her position, hardened herself and decided she would make this stranger’s stay unpleasant if she could.
Understanding this in a vague uncertain fashion, Grace said,—