“No?” said Mrs. Farrell. “Why should I look well? But I don’t know that I don’t feel as well as usual in the way I suppose you mean.”
“I’m sorry you don’t feel well in every way,” said Mrs. Gilbert, responding to so much of an advance as might be made to her in Mrs. Farrell’s dispirited words; and after another little silence, she said, “Mr. Easton seems to have gained a great deal in the last week.”
“Yes, he is very much better; he is going away soon; he will not be here many days longer.”
“Mrs. Farrell,” said Mrs. Gilbert, “I wish you would let me say something to you.”
“Oh, say anything you like. Why shouldn’t you?” returned Mrs. Farrell, not resentfully, but in the same dispirited tone.
“I know you don’t trust me,” began Mrs. Gilbert.
“There isn’t much trust lost between us, is there?” asked Mrs. Farrell as before.
“But I hope you will believe,” continued Mrs. Gilbert, “that when we last spoke here together I wasn’t trying to interfere with what you might consider entirely your own affair from any mean or idle motive. If I was trying to pry into your heart, as you said then, it was because it seemed to me that it was partly my affair, too.”
“I didn’t mean to resent anything you did or said,” answered Mrs. Farrell. “It wasn’t my own affair altogether. Nothing that’s wrong can be one’s own affair, I suppose; it belongs to the whole world.” Mrs. Gilbert looked a little surprised at the wisdom of this, which had its own curious pathos, coming from whom it did, and Mrs. Farrell spoke again with sudden impetuosity, “Oh, Mrs. Gilbert, I hope you are not judging me harshly!”
“No, I am trying not to judge you at all.”