The house seemed singularly desolate, filled, as it was, with ghostly shadows. Through the rooms moved the memory of Iris, and of that gentle mistress who slept in the churchyard, who had permeated every nook and corner of it with the sweetness of her personality. There was something in the air, as though music had just ceased—the wraith of long-gone laughter, the fall of long-shed tears.
“I miss Iris,” said Margaret, dreamily. “She was like a daughter to me.”
Taken off his guard, Lynn’s conscious face instantly betrayed him.
“Lynn,” said Margaret, suddenly, “did you have anything to do with her going away?”
The answer was scarcely audible. “Yes.”
Margaret never forced a confidence, but after a pause she said very gently: “Dear, is there anything you want to tell me?”
“It’s nothing,” said Lynn, roughly. He rose and walked around the room nervously. “It’s nothing,” he repeated, with assumed carelessness. “I—I asked her to marry me, and she wouldn’t. That’s all. It’s nothing.”
Margaret’s first impulse was to smile. This child, to be talking of marriage—then her heart leaped, for Lynn was twenty-three; older than she had been when the star rose upon her horizon and then set forever.
Then came a momentary awkwardness. Childish though the trouble was, she pitied Lynn, and regretted that she could not shield him from it as she had shielded him from all else in his life.
Then resentment against Iris. What was she, a nameless outcast, to scorn the offered distinction? Any woman in the world might be proud to become Lynn’s wife.