Cairy had laughed immoderately. Isabelle had laughed with him,—"Yes, I suppose you are all alike; you would slump every morning at breakfast."
This spring Isabelle had grown tired, even of people. "Conny wants to come next month, and I suppose I must have her. I wanted Margaret, but she has got to take the little boy up to some place in the country and can't come…. There's a woman, now," she mused to Vickers, her mind departing on a train of association with Margaret Pole. "I wonder how she possibly stands life with that husband of hers. He's getting worse all the time. Drinks now! Margaret asked me if John could give him something in the railroad, and John sent him out to a place in the country where he would be out of harm…. There's marriage for you! Margaret is the most intelligent woman I know, and full of life if she had only half a chance to express herself. But everything is ruined by that mistake she made years ago. If I were she—" Isabelle waved a rebellious hand expressively. "I thought at one time that she was in love with Rob Falkner,—she saw a lot of him. But he has gone off to Panama. Margaret won't say a word about him; perhaps she is in love with him still,—who knows!"
One day she looked up from a book at Vickers, who was at the piano, and observed casually:—
"Tom is coming up to spend June when he gets back from the South." She waited for an expected remark, and then added, "If you dislike him as much as you used to, you had better take that time for Fosdick."
"Do you want me to go?"
"No,—only I thought it might be more comfortable for you—"
"Cairy doesn't make me uncomfortable."
"Oh—well, you needn't worry about me, brother dear!" She blushed and came across the room to kiss him. "I am well harnessed; I shan't break the traces—yet."…
It was a summerish day, and at luncheon Isabelle seemed less moody than she had been since her arrival. "Let's take one of our old long rides,—just ride anywhere, as we used to," she suggested.
They talked of many things that afternoon, slipping back into the past and rising again to the present. Vickers, happy in her quieter, gentler mood, talked of himself, the impressions he had received these months in his own land.