Calthorpe had already noticed that she never lost an opportunity of praising her husband and advertising her own contentment. She was more reticent about her brother-in-law, and when once Calthorpe asked her why, she replied after a slight hesitation.
“Silas can speak for himself; he doesn’t need any one to speak for him.”
“He can certainly speak!” said Calthorpe. “Do you remember how he startled us all at the inquest? why, by the time he’d finished, half the folk were wondering whether they shouldn’t throw themselves into the floods, and the other half whether they shouldn’t go home and strangle their families!”
It was the first time he had directly mentioned the inquest to Nan, and he did so now in full recollection of the effect Silas’s speech had had upon her. He had hesitated long over the problem whether he should ever allude to it or no, but recognising the subject as the shadow always in the background of their talks, he had decided to attack it openly, his intent, as usual, kindly.
“It’s worried you a good deal, I know,” he added.
“Oh,” she began,—he knew that little “Oh,” by which she prefaced her remarks and which always betrayed her nervousness,—“Oh, I don’t think we ought to talk about it, do you?”
“You mean, you don’t want to talk about it?”
She got up in a restless way, and busied herself with a vase of wild flowers upon the dresser, turning herself so that her face was hidden from him.
“Mrs. Dene, you don’t want to talk about it?”
“Oh, don’t drive me, please,” she murmured, in a voice full of distress.