Grace flushed guiltily, and Miss Gleason cowered a little, perhaps interpreting the color as resentment. “I should consider that a very silly motive,” she said, helplessly ashamed that she was leaving the weight of the blow upon Miss Gleason’s shoulders instead of her own.
“Of course,” said Miss Gleason enthusiastically, “you can’t confess it. But I know you are capable of such a thing—of anything heroic! Do forgive me,” she said, seizing Grace’s hand. She held it a moment, gazing with a devouring fondness into her face, which she stooped a little sidewise to peer up into. Then she quickly dropped her hand, and, whirling away, glided slimly out of the corridor.
Grace softly opened Mrs. Maynard’s door, and the sick woman opened her eyes. “I wasn’t asleep,” she said hoarsely, “but I had to pretend to be, or that woman would have killed me.”
Grace went to her and felt her hands and her flushed forehead.
“I am worse this evening,” said Mrs. Maynard.
“Oh, no,” sighed the girl, dropping into a chair at the bedside, with her eyes fixed in a sort of fascination on the lurid face of the sick woman.
“After getting me here,” continued Mrs. Maynard, in the same low, hoarse murmur, “you might at least stay with me a little. What kept you so long?”
“The wind fell. We were becalmed.”
“We were not becalmed the day I went out with Mr. Libby. But perhaps nobody forced you to go.”
Having launched this dart, she closed her eyes again with something more like content than she had yet shown: it had an aim of which she could always be sure.