“Oh, yes! I stayed to see them off and drove to the depot with them. We called for Nan Gerard. What a flirt that girl is! Any one would think that she had known Mr. Ralph all his life.”
Sue leaned backward against Tessa; her face was feverish and excited, her thin cheeks would have looked hollow but for their high color, her eyes as she raised them revealed something new; something new and not altogether pleasant.
Tessa touched her hair and then bent over and kissed her. It was so seldom that Sue was kissed.
“You know that night—” Sue began with an effort, “the night before New Years. Mr. Ralph found me in his den, I was arranging one of his tables, and he said that he wanted to talk to me. And I should think he did! I didn’t know that he had so much tongue in his head. His mother calls him Ralph the Silent. Grace Geer calls him Ralph the Wily when nobody hears. He is Ralph the Hateful when he wants to be. How he went on! Fury! There! I promised him not to talk slang or to use ‘unlady-like exclamations.’ I was as high and mighty as he was, but I wanted to cry all the time. He said that I ought to live for something, that I am not a child but a woman. And I promised him that I wouldn’t read novels until he says that I may! He said that I didn’t know what trouble is! He has had trouble, Grace Geer says. I don’t see how. Some girl I suppose. Perhaps she flirted with him. I hope she did. But I have had trouble. Did he ever wait and wait and wait for a thing till he almost died with waiting, and then find that he didn’t get it and never could? Did you ever feel so?”
The appealing eyes were looking into hers; she could not speak instantly.
“I don’t believe that you ever did. You are quiet. You have a nice home and people to love you; your mother and father are so proud of you; your mother is always talking to people about you as if she couldn’t live without you! And you don’t have beaux and such horrid things! I shouldn’t think that you would like Dine to have a lover before you have one.”
“Dine?” said Tessa, looking perplexed.
“Why, yes, Mr. Hammerton.”
“Oh, I forgot him,” replied Tessa, almost laughing.
“I wish that I had never seen Old Place. I never should have thought any thing if it hadn’t been for Grace Geer. Before I went to Old Place I expected to marry Stacey. She put things into my head. She used to call me Mrs. Ralph, and tell me how splendidly I could dress after I was married! And she used to ask me what he said to me and explain that it meant something. I didn’t know that it meant any thing. He was so old and so wise that I thought he could never think of me. Once she went home with me and she told father and Aunt Jane and Dr. Lake that they were going to lose me. He told me himself that night that he was more interested in me than in any body.”