Marian’s fingers played with the afghan. “Circumstances alter cases,” she said composedly. “Evelyn and René are very much in love and deserve their happiness.”
Maynard again leaned nearer. “You have so much sympathy for another’s romance and for your own you have none. Do you never think of yourself?”
“Too much.” Marian’s smile was strained. “I would rather you left my feelings and my affairs out of the discussion.”
“Certainly; but——” Maynard hesitated a long moment. “Your husband——”
“Died long ago.”
Both her voice and manner precluded further questioning, and biting his lip Maynard sat back and contemplated her in silence. A deeper appreciation of her beauty stirred his pulse to a quicker beat; anxiety and hard work, which embitters some natures, had softened and rounded out Marian’s character. Maynard was unaware of the passing seconds as he sat musing, and Marian, controlling her restless longing to be alone, sat like an image, thankful that she had a back to lean against and the side of the sofa on which to rest her elbow. She felt inexplicably weary. Why would Maynard persist in raising the specter of the past? How could he allude to——
A loud ring of the bell came as a welcome relief to Marian.
Before she could start to answer it old Mammy appeared in the entrance hall from the dining room, having gone there upon awakening to find out whose voice it was she heard talking to Marian. The next instant she had ushered James Palmer into the parlor.
“Don’t get up, Mrs. Van Ness,” he entreated, moving forward with as much speed as his bulk permitted. “I only stopped in for a moment. Don’t think me unneighborly if I confess I came to see Maynard,” laying his hand on the latter’s shoulder.
Marian laughed vexedly. Did every one in the apartment house keep tab on her visitors, or was it only Palmer’s curiosity which had brought him there to find out if by chance Evelyn and her French lover were with her? Palmer’s next remark to Maynard caught her by surprise in its direct answer to her unspoken question.