"It may lie on the table till he comes," said Elizabeth with the slightest bend of her stately little head. She might have meant the letter or the pleasure or the business, or all three.
"You are well, Miss Haye?" said Winthrop doubtfully.
"No — I am well enough," said Elizabeth. A revulsion of feeling had very nearly brought down her head in a flood of tears; but she kept that back carefully and perfectly; and the next instant she started with another change, for Rose came in. She gave Winthrop a very smiling and bright salutation; which he acknowledged silently, gravely, and even distantly.
"Aren't you well, Mr. Landholm?" was Rose's next instant question, most sweetly given.
"Very well," he said with another bow.
"What have you been talking about, to get so melancholy?
Lizzie —"
But Rose caught sight of the gathered blackness of that face, and stopped short. Elizabeth bestowed one glance upon her; and as she then turned to the other person of the party the revulsion came over her again, so strong that it was overcoming. For a minute her hands went to her face, and it was with extreme difficulty that the rising heart was kept down. Will had the mastery, however, and her face looked up again more dark than ever.
"We have talked of nothing at all," she said. "Mr. Landholm only came to bring a letter."
Mr. Landholm could not stay after that, for anything. He bowed himself out; and left Elizabeth standing in the middle of the floor, looking as if the crust of the earth had given way under her and 'chaos was come again.' She stood there as she had stood in the window, still and cold; and Rose afar off by the chimney corner stood watching her, as one would a wild beast or a venomous creature in the room, not a little fear mingled with a shadow of something else in her face.
Elizabeth's first movement was to walk a few steps up and down, swinging one clenched hand, but half the breadth of the room was all she went. She sunk down there beside a chair and hid her face, exclaiming or rather groaning out, one after the other, — "Oh! — oh!" — in such tones as are dragged from very far down in the heart; careless of Rose's hearing her.