At least so her husband and lover thought, as he moved tenderly towards her.She met his first kiss on her forehead; the second, a supererogatory one, based on some supposed inefficiency in the first, fell upon a shining band of her hair, beside her neck.She reached up her slim hands, caught his wrists firmly, and, slightly putting him aside, said:
"There, Edward?"
"I drove out from Warensboro, so as to get here to-night, as I have to return to the city on Tuesday.I thought it would give me a little more time with you, Joan," he said, looking around him, and, at last, hesitatingly drawing an apparently reluctant chair from its formal position at the window.The remembrance that he had ever dared to occupy the same chair with her, now seemed hardly possible of credence.
"If it was a question of your travelling on the Lord's Day, Edward, I would rather you should have waited until to-morrow," she said, with slow precision.
"But--I--I thought I'd get here in time for the meeting," he said, weakly.
"And instead, you have driven through the town, I suppose, where everybody will see you and talk about it.But," she added, raising her dark eyes suddenly to his, "where else have you been? The train gets into Warensboro at six, and it's only half an hour's drive from there.What have you been doing, Edward?"It was scarcely a felicitous moment for the introduction of Demorest's name, and he would have avoided it.But he reflected that he had been seen, and he was naturally truthful."I met Dick Demorest near the church, and as he had something to tell me, we drove down the turnpike a little way--so as to be out of the town, you know, Joan--and--and--"He stopped.Her face had taken upon itself that appalling and exasperating calmness of very good people who never get angry, but drive others to frenzy by the simple occlusion of an adamantine veil between their own feelings and their opponents'."I'll tell you all about it after I've put up the horse," he said hurriedly, glad to escape until the veil was lifted again."I suppose the hired man is out.""I should hope he was in church, Edward, but I trust YOU won't delay taking care of that poor dumb brute who has been obliged to minister to your and Mr.Demorest's Sabbath pleasures."Blandford did not wait for a further suggestion.When the door had closed behind him, Mrs.Blandford went to the mantel-shelf, where a grimly allegorical clock cut down the hours and minutes of men with a scythe, and consulted it with a slight knitting of her pretty eyebrows.Then she fell into a vague abstraction, standing before the open book on the centre-table.Then she closed it with a snap, and methodically putting it exactly in the middle of the top of a black cabinet in the corner, lifted the shaded lamp in her hand and passed slowly with it up the stairs to her bedroom, where her light steps were heard moving to and fro.In a few moments she reappeared, stopping for a moment in the hall with the lighted lamp as if to watch and listen for her husband's return.Seen in that favorable light, her cheeks had caught a delicate color, and her dark eyes shone softly.Putting the lamp down in exactly the same place as before, she returned to the cabinet for the book, brought it again to the table, opened it at the page where she had placed her perforated cardboard book-marker, sat down beside it, and with her hands in her lap and her eyes on the page began abstractedly to tear a small piece of paper into tiny fragments.When she had reduced it to the smallest shreds, she scraped the pieces out of her silk lap and again collected them in the pink hollow of her little hand, kneeling down on the scrupulously well-swept carpet to peck up with a bird-like action of her thumb and forefinger an escaped atom here and there.These and the contents of her hand she poured into the chilly cavity of a sepulchral-looking alabaster vase that stood on the etagere.Returning to her old seat, and making a nest for her clasped fingers in the lap of her dress, she remained in that attitude, her shoulders a little narrowed and bent forward, until her husband returned.
"I've lit the fire in the bedroom for you to change your clothes by," she said, as he entered; then evading the caress which this wifely attention provoked, by bending still more primly over her book, she added, "Go at once.You're making everything quite damp here."He returned in a few moments in his slippers and jacket, but evidently found the same difficulty in securing a conjugal and confidential contiguity to his wife.There was no apparent social centre or nucleus of comfort in the apartment; its fireplace, sealed by an iron ornament like a monumental tablet over dead ashes, had its functions superseded by an air-tight drum in the corner, warmed at second-hand from the dining-room below, and offered no attractive seclusion; the sofa against the wall was immovable and formally repellent.He was obliged to draw a chair beside the table, whose every curve seemed to facilitate his wife's easy withdrawal from side-by-side familiarity.
"Demorest has been urging me very strongly to go to California, but, of course, I spoke of you," he said, stealing his hand into his wife's lap, and possessing himself of her fingers.
Mrs.Blandford slowly lifted her fingers enclosed in his clasping hand and placed them in shameless publicity on the volume before her.This implied desecration was too much for Blandford; he withdrew his hand.
"Does that man propose to go with you?" asked Mrs.Blandford, coldly.