Zeena, while he spoke, seemed to be following out some elaborate mental calculation.  She emerged from it to say:  “There’ll be Mattie’s board less, any how-”

Ethan, supposing the discussion to be over, had turned to go down to supper.  He stopped short, not grasping what he heard.  “Mattie’s board less-?” he began.

Zeena laughed.  It was on odd unfamiliar sound-he did not remember ever having heard her laugh before.  “You didn’t suppose I was going to keep two girls, did you?  No wonder you were scared at the expense!”

He still had but a confused sense of what she was saying.  From the beginning of the discussion he had instinctively avoided the mention of Mattie’s name, fearing he hardly knew what:  criticism, complaints, or vague allusions to the imminent probability of her marrying.  But the thought of a definite rupture had never come to him, and even now could not lodge itself in his mind.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.  “Mattie Silver’s not a hired girl.  She’s your relation.”

“She’s a pauper that’s hung onto us all after her father’d done his best to ruin us.  I’ve kep’ her here a whole year:  it’s somebody else’s turn now.”

As the shrill words shot out Ethan heard a tap on the door, which he had drawn shut when he turned back from the threshold.

“Ethan-Zeena!” Mattie’s voice sounded gaily from the landing, “do you know what time it is?  Supper’s been ready half an hour.”

Inside the room there was a moment’s silence; then Zeena called out from her seat:  “I’m not coming down to supper.”

“Oh, I’m sorry!  Aren’t you well?  Sha’n’t I bring you up a bite of something?”

Ethan roused himself with an effort and opened the door.  “Go along down, Matt.  Zeena’s just a little tired.  I’m coming.”

He heard her “All right!” and her quick step on the stairs; then he shut the door and turned back into the room.  His wife’s attitude was unchanged, her face inexorable, and he was seized with the despairing sense of his helplessness.

“You ain’t going to do it, Zeena?”

“Do what?” she emitted between flattened lips.

“Send Mattie away-like this?”

“I never bargained to take her for life!”

He continued with rising vehemence:  “You can’t put her out of the house like a thief-a poor girl without friends or money.  She’s done her best for you and she’s got no place to go to.  You may forget she’s your kin but everybody else’ll remember it.  If you do a thing like that what do you suppose folks’ll say of you?”

Zeena waited a moment, as if giving him time to feel the full force of the contrast between his own excitement and her composure.  Then she replied in the same smooth voice:  “I know well enough what they say of my having kep’ her here as long as I have.”

Ethan’s hand dropped from the door-knob, which he had held clenched since he had drawn the door shut on Mattie.  His wife’s retort was like a knife-cut across the sinews and he felt suddenly weak and powerless.  He had meant to humble himself, to argue that Mattie’s keep didn’t cost much, after all, that he could make out to buy a stove and fix up a place in the attic for the hired girl-but Zeena’s words revealed the peril of such pleadings.