Her voice throbbed with feeling. She had lifted the veil for a moment to salve the other woman's bitterness.
And Mrs. Bathurst realized it, and was touched. "Ah! You've suffered," she said.
Isabel bent her head. "But it is over," she said. "I married a man who, they said, was beneath me. But--God knows--he was above me--in every way. And then--I lost him." Her voice sank.
Mrs. Bathurst's hand came down with a clumsy movement upon hers. "He died?" she said.
"Yes." Almost in a whisper Isabel made answer. "For years I would not face it--would not believe it. He went from me so suddenly--oh, God, so suddenly--" a tremor of anguish sounded in the low words; but in a moment she raised her head, and her eyes were shining with a brightness that no pain could dim. "It is over," she said. "It is quite, quite over. My night is past and can never come again. I am waiting now for the full day. And I know that I have not very long to wait. I have not seen him--no, I have not seen him. But--twice now--I have heard his voice."
"Poor soul! Poor soul!" said Mrs. Bathurst.
It was all the sympathy she could express; but it came from her heart. She no longer regretted her own burst of confidence. The spontaneous answer that it had evoked had had a magically softening effect upon her. In all her life no one had ever charmed her thus. She was astonished herself at the melting of her hardness.
"You've suffered worse than I have," she said, "for I never cared for any man like that. I was let down badly when I was a girl, and I've never had any opinion of any of 'em since. My husband's all right, so far as he goes. But he isn't the sort of man to worship. Precious few of 'em are."
Whereat Isabel laughed, a soft, sad laugh. "That is why worldly position matters so little," she said. "If by chance the right man really comes, nothing else counts. He is just everything."
"Maybe you're right," said Mrs. Bathurst, with gloomy acquiescence. "Anyhow, it isn't for me to say you're wrong."
And this was why when Dinah brought in the tea, she found a wholly new element in the atmosphere, and missed the customary sharp rebuke from her mother's lips when she had to go back for the sugar-tongs.
She had been disappointed that her friend Scott had not been of the party. Isabel's explanation that he had gone home at Eustace's wish to attend to some business had not removed an odd little hurt sense of having been defrauded. She had counted upon seeing Scott that day. It was almost as if he had failed her when she needed him, though why she seemed to need him she could not have said, nor could he possibly have known that she would do so.