“It is very strange indeed. I cannot understand them, or what right you can have to put them. A stranger must have a very good reason indeed for interfering at all between a man and his wife.”
“I do not want to interfere,” cried Lydia; “oh, believe me, it is not that! I want only to know; and it may be very important for you and the family, as well as for us. I am only surmising, groping; and I am not—very old,” the girl said, with that instinctive appeal to personal feeling with which women invariably back up all arguments, “nor experienced. I don’t know how to go about it. But it is of so much importance, if I only could tell you right, to my mother, and all of us, and may be to you too.”
“Your mother, and all of you! What do you mean? What have you to do with my husband?” Rita cried.
The wonder, and even the indignation, were natural enough. To be confronted all at once by a stranger demanding news of your husband, declaring that what she wishes to find out will be very important to her mother—what could be more bewildering, more irritating to a woman? Her nostrils began to expand, and her eyes to flash. “There is evidently some mystery here which I am unable to fathom,” she said.
“It is a very innocent mystery,” said Lydia; “there is nothing in it that will do him any harm, or you. If you will not tell me, will you take him a message from me? It must be cleared up one way or another, for we are going away to-day.”
“Mr. Oliver is in the office,” said Rita coldly, walking to the bell. “He can be sent for at once.”
“Will you wait a little, please?” Lydia said, faintly; “though I feel so sure, yet I may be wrong. Will you take a message for me? It will be better if you will do it than seeing him myself.”
“I would rather not be mixed up with any mystery.” Rita had her hand on the bell. She was drawn up to twice her usual height, her small foot planted firmly on the ground, her head thrown back, her whole person instinct with resistance, defiance, and indignation. And Lydia before her, flushed and excited, was not at all unlike a suppliant handmaiden, whom the wife had a right to reject and cast forth out of her house.
“Oh, do not be so hard upon me,” she cried. “Listen to what I want you to say to him. Would I send any message that could hurt him by his wife?”
“Hurt—him—” Rita began to be confused, and took her hand from the bell. “But it might hurt me.”