Chapter XV

While Henry was at Sidney Meeks’s, Horace sat alone smoking and reading the evening paper.  He kept looking up from the paper and listening.  He was hoping that Rose, in spite of the fact that she had not been able to come down to supper, might yet make her appearance.  He speculated on her altered looks and manner at dinner.  He could not help being a little anxious, in spite of all Mrs. Ayres’s assurances and the really vague nature of his own foreboding.  He asked himself if he had had from the beginning anything upon which to base suspicion.  Given the premises of an abnormal girl with a passion for himself which humiliated him, an abnormal woman like Miss Farrel with a similar passion, albeit under better control, the melodramatic phases of the candy, and sudden death, and traces of arsenical poison, what should be the conclusion?

He himself had eaten some of presumably the same candy with no ill effects.  Mrs. Ayres had assured him of her constant watchfulness over her daughter, who was no doubt in an alarmingly nervous state, but was she necessarily dangerous?  He doubted if Mrs. Ayres had left the two girls a moment to themselves during the drive.  What possible reason, after all, had he for alarm?

When he heard Sylvia mounting the stairs, and caught a glimpse of a little tray borne carefully, he gave up all hope of Rose’s coming down.  Presently he went out and walked down the village street, smoking.  As he passed out of the yard he glanced up at Rose’s windows, and saw the bright light behind the curtains.  He felt glad that the girl had a woman like Sylvia to care for her.

As he looked Sylvia’s shadow passed between the window and the light.  It had, in its shadowy enlargement, a benignant aspect.  There was an angelic, motherly bend to the vague shoulders.  Sylvia was really in her element.  She petted and scolded the girl, whom she found flung upon her bed like a castaway flower, sobbing pitifully.

“What on earth is the matter?” demanded Sylvia, in a honeyed tone, which at once stung and sweetened.  “Here you are in the dark, crying and going without your victuals.  You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

As she spoke Sylvia struck a match and lit the lamp.  Rose buried her face deeper in the bed.

“I don’t want any lamp,” she gasped.

“Don’t want any lamp?  Ain’t you ashamed of yourself?  I should think you were a baby.  You are going to have a lamp, and you are going to sit up and eat your supper.”  Sylvia drew down the white shades carefully, then she bent over the girl.  She did not touch her, but she was quivering with maternal passion which seemed to embrace without any physical contact.  “Now, what is the matter?” she said.

“Nothing.”

“What is the matter?” repeated Sylvia, insistently.

Suddenly Rose sat up.  “Nothing is the matter,” she said.  “I am just nervous.”  She made an effort to control her face.  She smiled at Sylvia with her wet eyes and swollen mouth.  She resolutely dabbed at her flushed face with a damp little ball of handkerchief.