She smiled, half mysteriously, yet with a frankness that imaged truth.
“I have passed through trouble since I spoke with you by the river,” she said.
Gabriel listened in silence as she spoke to him of much that had passed at the house amid the yews. The twain might have been in each other’s hearts for years. When he questioned her at the end thereof she showed him her hands, less white than of yore and roughened with toil.
“I am alone now,” she said.
“No one to help.”
“I do all for my father’s sake. It is better so. He is growing very decrepit.”
“You must be utterly lonely.”
“I am—at times.”
“And yet you have no friends?”
“None.”