"I believe it does, here," said the old lady, with a sniff. "Well," she said after a pause, "I think I will go back and tell Matilda what I have seen. And if you are wise you will come with me, too. This is no place for plain, country-bred people like you and me."
Keith, laughing, said he had an engagement, but he would like to have the privilege of taking her home, and then he could return.
"With a married woman, I suppose? Yes, I will be bound it is," she added as Keith nodded. "You see the danger of evil association. I shall write to your father and tell him that the sooner he gets you out of New York the better it will be for your morals and your manners. For you are the only man, except Norman, who has been so provincial as to take notice of an unknown old woman."
So she went chatting merrily down the stairway to her carriage, making her observations on whatever she saw with the freshness of a girl.
"Do you think Norman is happy?" she suddenly asked Keith.
"Why--yes; don't you think so? He has everything on earth to make him happy," said Keith, with some surprise. But even at the moment it flitted across his mind that there was something which he had felt rather than observed in Mrs. Wentworth's attitude toward her husband.
"Except that he has married a fool," said the old lady, briefly. "Don't you marry a fool, you hear?"
"I believe she is devoted to Norman and to her children," Keith began, but Miss Abigail interrupted him.
"And why shouldn't she be? Isn't she his wife? She gives him, perhaps, what is left over after her devotion to herself, her house, her frocks, her jewels, and--Adonis."
"Oh, I don't believe she cares for him," declared Keith. "It is impossible."