“Gaspare told me you were here.”
“I have been here about half an hour.”
She had not given him her hand. She did not give it.
“I didn’t hear you talking to Vere, so I wondered—I almost thought—”
“That I had gone without seeing you? Oh no. It isn’t very late. You don’t want to get rid of me at once?”
“Of course not.”
His manner—or so it seemed to her—was strangely uneasy and formal, and she thought his face looked drawn, almost tortured. But the light was very dim. She could not be sure of that.
Vere had said nothing, had not moved from her seat.
There was a third chair. As Hermione took it and drew it slightly forward, she looked towards Vere, and thought that she was sitting in a very strange position. In the darkness it seemed to the mother as if her child’s body were almost crouching in its chair, as if the head were drooping, as if—
“Vere! Is anything the matter with you?”