There is a tinge of exasperation in both words and voice, nor is the cause far to seek.
The table in the window is again empty. In the meantime the "swaggering" Elizabeth is clinging tremblingly about her mother's neck in the privacy of their own little salon. The absence of the husband and father for the moment in the smoking-room has removed the irksome restraint from both the poor women.
"Did you see him?" asks Elizabeth breathlessly, as soon as the door is safely closed upon them, flinging herself down upon her knees beside Mrs. Le Marchant, who has sunk into a chair, and cowering close to her as if for shelter. "What is he doing here? Why has he come? When first I caught sight of him I thought that of course—" She breaks off, sobbing; "and when I saw that he was alone I was relieved; but I was disappointed too! Oh, I must be a fool—a bad fool—but I was disappointed! Oh, mammy! mammy! how seeing him again brings it all back!"
"Do not cry, dear child! do not cry!" answers Mrs. Le Marchant apprehensively; though the voice in which she gives the exhortation is shaking too. "Your father will be in directly; and you know how angry——"
"I will not! I will not!" cries Elizabeth, trying, with her usual extreme docility, to swallow her tears; "and I do not show it much when I have been crying; my eyes do not mind it as much as most people's; I suppose"—with a small rainy smile—"because they are so used to it!"
"Perhaps he will not stay long," murmurs the mother, dropping a fond rueful kiss on the prone blonde head that lies on her knees; "perhaps if we are careful we may avoid speaking to him."
"But I must speak to him," breaks in the girl, lifting her head, and panting; "I must ask him; I must find out; why, we do not even know whether Willy is dead or alive!"
"He is not dead," rejoins the elder woman, with melancholy common-sense; "if he had been, we should have seen it in the papers; and, besides, why should he be? Grief does not kill; nobody, Elizabeth, is better able to attest that than you and I."
Elizabeth is now sitting on the floor, her hands clasped round her knees.
"He is aged," she says presently; and this time it is evident that the pronoun refers to Burgoyne.