‘What has happened? Tell me what it is.’
He held her hands fast, and would not let her go, swaying a little backward and forward as if he were shaking her, though he had no such meaning.
‘I have never understood,’ he repeated. ‘I must have been told what was not true. Now I know: you ought all to have seen that I must be told sooner or later. Is that true?’
She was a woman of great resolution, and she freed herself from him, though his hold was so close. She came round to the other side of the table, and stood looking at him, with the steady look which had daunted many a rebel. She said,
‘You are ill; you don’t know what you are saying. I should not wonder if you had had a slight sunstroke. You must go to Susie’s room, which is cool and fresh, and lie down.’
And then there ensued a moment’s parley, but not with words—with keen eyes looking into each other across the table. She stood as steady as a rock, as if she were thinking of nothing but the accidental illness of which she spoke. But John saw that the lighter part of her, the edge, so to speak, the line of her black gown, the turn of her elbow, had a quiver in them. He saw this without knowing that he saw it, as we do in moments of emotion.
‘Mother,’ he said, ‘it’s no mistake; it’s not illness. It’s what I tell you. Come with me and see him: and if you can say then that it is not true—— Ah!’ he exclaimed, with a sharp tone of distress, ‘you can’t. I see it in your face.’
Mrs. Sandford did all she could to steady herself still.
‘To see whom?’ she said. ‘To see——’ Then, with a long-drawn breath, ‘You are trying to frighten me. I know—no one of whom you can be speaking.’
‘Then why are you afraid?’ he said.