As he turned from the glass he saw his wife descending the broad stairs. She was small and fragile. In her youth she had had a delicate pink and gold beauty. The years had worn away the pink and the gold but had left a spirituality that seemed even finer.
“I’m glad you’re home early, Luke dear,” he heard her saying. Then noticing his air of abstraction she added: “Did you forget after all, Luke?”
“Forget,” he repeated blankly, “forget what, Lucy?”
“Oh you man!” replied his wife as if man were a word of reproach. “The church committee is to be here this afternoon to formulate its report on vice conditions.”
“Oh, that!” Mr. Randall chuckled. “Yes, I had forgotten, but anyhow I made it, you see. How’s Mary?”
“Very well—” Mrs. Randall broke off suddenly. There was a troubled look in her eyes. Then she added lightly almost to herself: “What a queer child!”
“Queer?”
“Yes, Luke, queer,” returned Mrs. Randall. Again that troubled look. “Luke, dear, I want to make a confession. I don’t understand Mary. After your brother Henry died, when we insisted that Mary come and live with us, it seemed wicked to leave her in that great house alone—and we have no children. Now, there are times I am almost sorry we did it. It isn’t that I want to criticise Mary”—noticing her husband’s look of surprise—“I know she loves us both and yet—well, I have the feeling that we don’t really know her. The intimacy I had longed for hasn’t developed. She seems to live a part of her time in another world than ours.” She broke off again, laughing nervously. “Do you know,” she said, “I sometimes have the feeling that Mary lives a sort of double life—nothing evil, you know—but uncanny. She’s not unkind nor lacking in affection for either of us, but often when we are together it seems to me that her mind is miles away.”
“Queer, eh?” said Mr. Randall, sympathetically. “Well, her father was like that.”
“It’s not strange if she is like her father,” charged Mrs. Randall. “He brought her up like a boy. After her mother died she was more like a chum to him than a daughter.”