It was one of her best days as regards articulation, so there was no room for misunderstanding. The words were harmless enough and Constance took them in the only sense in which they were applicable.
"I shall stay with him as long as he will keep me, you may rely on that, Mrs. Perry," she responded, brightly.
A pleasant smile came over the old lady's face and she looked in the direction of her son. Her mouth twitched. "Do you hear what she says, Gordon?" There was a humorous twinkle in her voice, which doubtless was not lost on him. His back was to the light, so that he had the advantage of shadow to cover his mental processes.
"I regard it as impossible that Constance and I should ever drift apart," he said.
His sphinx-like reply seemed to be reassuring to the invalid. She lay like one serenely satisfied, and did not pursue the subject further. As for Constance, she noticed the use by Mr. Perry of her Christian name again, but it seemed to her only fitting and friendly. She did not need his assurance to feel that they were not likely to drift apart, but it was delightful to hear it from his lips.
When Mrs. Perry's seeming convalescence had reached a stage at which the doctor was on the point of sending her out to drive, a second attack of her malady occurred and brought the end. She became unconscious at once, and passed away within a few hours. On the afternoon after the funeral Constance returned to the house with Loretta in order that the latter might collect and bring away her belongings. Gordon was closeted in his library alone with his sorrow, and the two women moving noiselessly through the silent house made but a brief stay. While they were on their way to Lincoln Chambers a newsboy entered the street-car crying the evening papers. Loretta having bought one made an ejaculation. Absorbed in what she had discovered, she paid no heed at first to Constance's glance of interrogation, but read with an avidity which seemed breathless. Then she thrust the sheet under her companion's eyes, and pointing to a column bristling with large headlines, exclaimed:
"Here it is at last; a full account of the divorce proceedings with their pictures, and a picture of her. It's a worse affair than anyone imagined. It says Paul Howard and his wife are mixed up in it, and there's something about a pistol going off at Newport. I haven't read it all yet. But look—look!"
Loretta's demeanor suggested not merely excitement, but a sort of saturnine glee, so that Constance turned from the printed page toward her as though seeking to fathom its cause, then back to the newspaper, the capitals of which told their sensational story with flaring offensiveness.
"I won't read it now, Loretta. I'll wait until we get home. What a cruel shame it is that the press has got hold of it."
Loretta gave a questioning jerk to her shoulders. "I don't know about that. I knew she wouldn't be able to hush it up. How could she expect to? Besides—" She did not finish her sentence. Instead, she wagged her head, as one in possession of a secret and grinned knowingly. "I'll tell you something, some day. But not now—not now." Then she reassumed control of the newspaper, saying, "Well, if you don't care to read it, I do. There are three columns." She uttered the last words as though she were announcing treasure-trove.