“Your Aunt Nannie suggested that, but your father would not have such a matter talked about over the ’phone.”
Sylvia racked her brains, but there was no other plan she could suggest. She saw that she had at least one day of torment and suspense before her. “Very well, Mamma,” she said. “Let me go to my room now. I’ll try to be calm. But don’t let anybody come, please—I want to be alone.”
She could hardly endure to go out into the hall, because of her shame, and the fear of meeting some member of the family. But there was no need of that—they all knew what was happening, and went about on tiptoe, as in a house of mourning. Everyone kept out of her way, and she went up to her room and shut herself in and locked the door. There passed twenty-four hours of agony, during which she by turns paced the floor, or lay upon the bed and wept, or sat in a chair, staring into space with unseeing eyes. They brought her food, but she would not touch it; they tempted her with wine, with coffee, but for nothing would she open the door. “Bring me Harley’s letter when it comes,” was all she would say.
§ 3
On the morning of the next day her mother came to her. “Has the letter come?” asked Sylvia.
The mother hesitated, and so Sylvia knew that it had come. “Give it to me!” she cried.
“It was addressed to your father, Sylvia——”
“Where is Papa?”
She started to the door. But “Miss Margaret” stood in her way. “Your father, my child, has asked your Uncle Basil to come over.” And then, as Sylvia persisted, “Sylvia, you can’t talk of such things to your father. He thinks it is a matter which your Uncle Basil ought to attend to. Please spare your father, Sylvia—he has been ill, and this has been such a dreadful blow to him!”
“But for God’s sake, Mamma, what is in the letter?”