"Don't pity me!" said she. "But you are a dear, good papa always." There was something in this of her old tone of contrasting her experience with his simplicity. This belief in his pastoral character was a tradition in the family.
Perhaps it was a part of this character that made him feel that a blank was being left in their conversation that at least called for a passing word to fill it in. "This poor fellow's death ..." he began, taking for granted that Jim Coupland's share in the tragedy would be as prominent in his daughter's mind as his own. But she stopped him with an exclamation of alarm as he hesitated.
"Why should he die?" she cried. "There is no chance of his death. See what the doctors said—both of them...."
He interrupted her. "I was not speaking of Sir Alfred. I was speaking of Jim Coupland—the blind man, who was killed—is it possible you do not know that he died?" For, to hear her speak, no one could have dreamed she knew of that sombre background to a sad day's work, the man lying dead near at hand.
"Jim Coupland!" she repeated; and the tone of her reply grated on her father, to whom the thought of Jim's death was an ever-present burden. Again she repeated, "Jim Coupland!" with a fuller stress on each syllable that all but seemed contempt. "Yes—but what is Jim Coupland ... compared to...?" Then she qualified her words: "Oh, well, of course, one feels all that I suppose one ought to feel, but...."
"What what?"
"But it's no use pretending...."
"My dear Judith, I don't understand."
"My dear papa, do you mean to say that if you were in my place.... However, it really is no use talking about it." Her manner was excited and resentful, till she suppressed it with an effort, and calmed down to say: "Suppose we don't talk about it!"
There was a symptom of indignation in her father's tone as he replied: "We shall gain nothing by talking at all, Judith, if I am right about your meaning. I may be wrong, my dear"—he softened rather—"but what you seem to me to mean, by the way you speak about this poor fellow's shocking death, is ... well!—in short, is, that you are indifferent to it."