Dick had joined an exploring party, and his allusions, by the way, to "Narrow shaves," "Nasty rows with natives," and "A rather beastly fever," explained these irregularities.
"He really ought to write a book about it. They have evidently been in danger, and had an heroic time of it altogether," Christina said, during a sympathetic perusal of these documents which were always handed on to her, as, for any intimacy they contained, they might have been handed on to anybody. They began--"Dear Milly"; and ended--"Yours aff'ly, D. Q." The "affectionately" was always abbreviated.
"I suppose they really are in a good deal of danger," said Milly, nibbling at her toast,--they were at breakfast.
"That, I suppose, was what they went for," Christina replied, her eyes passing over the letter.
Milly, leaning her elbow on the table, watched and read. "Poor Dick!" she said presently.
Christina had laid down the letter and was going on with her coffee.
"If he were killed to-morrow I suppose it would hardly affect us more than the death of any of the men who had tea here yesterday."
"Milly!" said Christina. She put down her cup.
"Would it?" Milly insisted. "Would you really mind more?"
"Your husband--my child!" This elder-sister mode of address was often Christina's.
"Why should a husband one hasn't been able to live with count for as much as a friend one is glad to see?"
"But, Christina, you can't deny that you would hardly be sorry, and that you would not expect me to be sorry--only solemn."
"Sorry because a man I have no affection for--a man I have almost hated--is dead?"
"Yes; if only for those reasons; and that it should be only for those reasons is what you meant when you said: 'Poor Dick,'" Christina demonstrated with an air of finality that showed her displeased with what she felt to be an unbecoming levity.
Milly was thinner, paler; Christina noticed that, though she did not notice how often she returned to the subject of her husband's danger and the irony of her own indifference to it. And Milly's listless moods followed one other so closely this winter as to become almost permanent. She was evidently bored. More and more frequently, when they were talking over their _tête-à-tête_ tea, the very dearest hour of the day, Christina saw that Milly did not hear her. After these four years of comprehension and mutual forbearance the apparent indifference or preoccupation could not, at first, seriously disturb her; hurt her it always did. Picking up a book she would read and cease to talk. The mood always passed the sooner for not being recognised, and Milly would come out of the cloud, unaware of it, sunnier, sweeter, more responsive than before. But this winter she did not come out. That she should be so bored, so apathetic, began to disturb as well as to hurt Christina. There came a quick pulsing of fear; did some new attachment account for it? Her mind, in a swift, flame-like running around the circle of possibilities, saw them all as impossibilities, and put the fear away.