"Hush, Anna! No, it is nothing--only that I am cold. Thank you all the same."
"I don't think I have been very well lately, Anna. Let me be quiet, my dear, for a few minutes, will you? my head aches."
Anna Chester, with the delicacy innate in her, quitted the room, setting things a little straight on the work-table in passing it. When Mr. Lake came back, Clara was sitting just as he had left her. Putting down the candle, he came close up, making some trifling remark.
She would have given the world to be able to say a word to him; to ask whether she was to be _second_ in his heart; second to that woman; but she simply dared not. Her agitation would have become unbearable, and ended in an hysterical scene.
He looked at her with a keen eye. She was odd, he thought.
"What's the matter, Clara? You seem dull this evening."
There was no answer. Mrs. Lake had her hand pressed upon her throat and chest, striving, though he knew it not, to still the agitation that all but burst its bounds.
"Where is the book?" she presently asked.
"The one you were to bring for me; that you forgot last time."
"Oh, to be sure; here it is," he said, taking it from his coat pocket. "I did not forget it this time, you see."
"You might have brought it to me when you first got back," she reproachfully said.
"Well, I have not been back long. You are shivering; what makes you so cold?"
"Perhaps you have been asleep; one does shiver sometimes on waking. Come along, Clara; tea will do you good."
She rose and followed him down. Mrs. Chester was pouring out the tea, and Lady Ellis, in her black silk gown with its low body and short sleeves, and the ruche of white crape, causing her to look girlish, years younger than she was, sat on the sofa. She had several evening dresses, but they were all black, and all made in the same simple style. Sir George had not been dead twelve months yet; but she had never worn a regular widow's cap--it would have spoilt her hair, she told them. The pretty white net things she wore in a morning were but an apology for one. Very fine, very silky and beautiful did her purple-black hair look that night, and Robert Lake playfully touched it as he sat down beside her.
The children's meal-table, at which Anna Chester used to preside in a little room, was done away with, the two boys having gone to school, so that Anna and Fanny were present as usual this evening. There was plenty of talking and laughing, and Clara's silence was not noticed--save perhaps by Anna Chester.