“They were decent to you, were they?” he said. “I presume that was why you went back to them from Fordestown?”
She thrust her pain away out of sight of his mocking eyes. “No,” she said quietly. “I went back to be with the little girl before she died. She wanted me.”
He gave a slight start. “What? The blind child that used to run about the lane? Is she dead? What from?”
“She was very fragile,” Frances said, and instinctively she spoke with reverence. “She had a fall which caused an abscess at the base of the brain, affecting the spine. The doctor had always known it might happen at any time. She didn’t suffer—dear little soul.”
“A tragic family!” commented Rotherby, and dropped into silence.
He leaned back in his chair with his face in shadow, and for a space she felt that his attention was no longer focussed upon her.
It gave her a certain sense of relief, for her thoughts would turn back to those few cynical words of his and she needed time to recover from the shock of them. Was it true? Was it true? Was this the key to the riddle that had so often baffled her? Was it for this that she had seen him writhing in agony of soul?
The curtain went up, and she jerked herself back to her surroundings. She tried to immerse herself anew in the play, but her interest was gone. The glamour had faded, and she knew that she was terribly, overwhelmingly tired. A desire for solitude came upon her and with it, inseparable from it, an intolerable sense of exile, a longing that was almost anguish for the peace of the open moors, for the scent of the bog-myrtle, and the rain. . . . She closed her eyes, and drew her memories about her like a mantle. . . .
Someone was speaking to her. A hand touched her. She looked up with a start.
Rotherby was leaning over her. His eyes met hers closely, lingeringly, with a caress in them which her tiredness barely comprehended.
“How tired you are!” he said. “Shall I take you home?”
Home! For a few moments her weary brain clung piteously about the word. Then the pressure of his hand brought swift awakening. She sat up with a jerk.
“Oh, is it over? Yes, I am very tired. Forgive me! Let us go!”
His hand still held her. He slipped it under her elbow, helping her to rise.