the nicest you ever saw this morning. By Jupiter, I taste them yet!”
Lucetta’s face, which should have crimsoned with mortification, turned most unaccountably pale. Yet not so pale as it had previously done when, a few minutes before, he began to say, “Loreen wants some of this soup saved for”—and stopped awkwardly, conscious perhaps that Loreen’s wants should not be mentioned before me.
“I thought you promised me that you would never again ask Mr. Trohm for any of his fruit,” remonstrated Lucetta.
“Oh, I didn’t ask! I just stood at the fence and looked over. Mr. Trohm and I are good friends. Why shouldn’t I eat his fruit?”
The look she gave him might have moved a stone, but he seemed perfectly impervious to it. Seeing him so stolid, her head drooped, and she did not answer a word. Yet somehow I felt that even while she was so manifestly a prey to the deepest mortification, her attention was not wholly given over to this one emotion. There was something else she feared. Hoping to relieve her and lighten the situation, I forced myself to smile on the young man as I said:
“Why don’t you raise melons yourself? I think if I possessed your land I should be anxious to raise everything I could on it.”
“Oh, you’re a woman!” he retorted, almost roughly. “It’s good business for women; and for men, too, perhaps, who love to see fruit hang, but I only care to eat it.”
“Don’t,” Lucetta put in, but not with the vigor I had expected.
“I like to hunt, train dogs, and enjoy other people’s fruit,” he laughed, with a nod at the blushing Lucetta. “I don’t see any use in a man’s putting himself out for things he can get for the asking. Life’s too short for such folly. I mean to have a good time while I’m on this blessed sphere.”
“William!”
The cry was irresistible, yet it was not the cry I had been looking for. Painful as was this exhibition of his stupidity and utter want of feeling, it was not the one thing she stood in dread of, or why was her protest so much weaker than her appearance had given token of?
“Oh!” he shouted in great amusement, while she shrunk back with a horrified look. “Lucetta don’t like to hear me say that. She thinks a man ought to work, plow, harrow, dig, make a slave of himself, to keep up a place that’s no good anyway. But I tell her that work is something she’ll never get out of me. I was born a gentleman, and a gentleman I will live if the place tumbles down over our heads. Perhaps it would be the best way to get rid of it. Then I could go live with Mr. Trohm, and have melons from early morn till late at night.” And again his coarse laugh rang out.
This, or was it his words, seemed to rouse her as nothing had done before. Thrusting out her hand, she laid it on his mouth, with a look of almost frenzied appeal at the woman who was standing at his back.
“Mr. William, how can you!” that woman protested; and when he would have turned upon her angrily, she leaned over and whispered in his ear a few words that seemed to cow him, for he gave a short grunt through his sister’s trembling fingers and, with a shrug of his heavy shoulders, subsided into silence.
To all this I was a simple spectator, but I did not soon forget a single feature of the scene.
The remainder of the dinner passed quietly, William and myself eating with more or less heartiness, Lucetta tasting nothing at all. In mercy to her I declined coffee, and as soon as William gave token of being satisfied, we hurriedly rose. It was the most uncomfortable meal I ever ate in my life.
Chapter VI.
A Sombre Evening
The evening, like the afternoon, was spent in the sitting-room with one of the sisters. One event alone is worth recording. I had become excessively tired of a conversation that always languished, no matter on what topic it started, and, observing an old piano in one corner—I once played very well—I sat down before it and impulsively struck a few chords from the yellow keys. Instantly Lucetta—it was Lucetta who was with me then—bounded to my side with a look of horror.
“Don’t do that!” she cried, laying her hand on mine to stop me. Then, seeing my look of dignified astonishment, she added with an appealing smile, “I beg pardon, but every sound goes through me to-night.”
“Are you not well?” I asked.
“I am never very well,” she returned, and we went back to the sofa and renewed our forced and pitiful attempts at conversation.
Promptly at nine o’clock Miss Knollys came in. She was very pale and cast, as usual, a sad and uneasy look at her sister before she spoke to me. Immediately Lucetta rose, and, becoming very pale herself, was hurrying toward the door when her sister stopped her.
“You have forgotten,” she said, “to say good-night to our guest.”
Instantly Lucetta turned, and, with a sudden, uncontrollable impulse, seized my hand and pressed it convulsively.
“Good-night,” she cried. “I hope you will sleep well,” and was gone before I could say a word in response.
“Why does Lucetta go out of the room when you come in?” I asked, determined to know the reason for this peculiar conduct. “Have you any other guests in the house?”
The reply came with unexpected vehemence. “No,” she cried, “why should you think so? There is no one here but the family.” And she turned away with a dignity she must have inherited from her father, for Althea Burroughs had every interesting quality but that. “You must be very tired,” she remarked. “If you please we will go now to your room.”
I rose at once, glad of the prospect of seeing the upper portion of the house. She took my wraps on her arm, and we passed immediately into the hall. As we did so, I heard voices, one of them shrill and full of distress; but the sound was so quickly smothered by a closing door that I failed to discover whether this tone of suffering proceeded from a man or a woman.
Miss Knollys, who was preceding me, glanced back in some alarm, but as I gave no token of having noticed anything out of the ordinary, she speedily resumed her way up-stairs. As the sounds I had heard proceeded from above, I followed her with alacrity, but felt my enthusiasm diminish somewhat when I found myself passing door after door down a long hall to a room as remote as possible from what seemed to be the living portion of the house.
“Is it necessary to put me off quite so far?” I asked, as my young hostess paused and waited for me to join her on the threshold of the most forbidding room it had ever been my fortune to enter.
The blush which mounted to her brow showed that she felt the situation keenly.
“I am sure,” she said, “that it is a matter of great regret to me to be obliged to offer you so mean a lodging, but all our other rooms are out of order, and I cannot accommodate you with anything better to-night.”
“But isn’t there some spot nearer you?” I urged. “A couch in the same room with you would be more acceptable to me than this distant room.”
“I—I hope you are not timid,” she began, but I hastened to disabuse her mind on this score.
“I am not afraid of any earthly thing but dogs,” I protested warmly. “But I do not like solitude. I came here for companionship, my dear. I really would like to sleep with one of you.”
This, to see how she would meet such urgency. She met it, as I might have known she would, by a rebuff.
“I am very sorry,” she again repeated, “but it is quite impossible. If I could give you the comforts you are accustomed to, I should be glad, but we are unfortunate, we girls, and—” She said no more, but began to busy herself about the room, which held but one object that had the least look of comfort