It was a black sleety day, with an east wind blowing the trees beyond the drenched window-panes, and the two friends, after luncheon, had withdrawn to the library, where Justine sat writing notes for Bessy, while the latter lay back in her arm-chair, in the state of dreamy listlessness into which she always sank when not under the stimulus of amusement or exercise.
She sat suddenly upright as her eyes fell on the letter.
“I beg your pardon! I thought it was for me,” she said, holding it out to Justine.
The latter reddened as she glanced at the superscription. It had not occurred to her that Amherst would reply to her appeal: she had pictured him springing on the first north—bound train, perhaps not even pausing to announce his return to his wife.… And to receive his letter under Bessy’s eye was undeniably embarrassing, since Justine felt the necessity of keeping her intervention secret.
But under Bessy’s eye she certainly was—it continued to rest on her curiously, speculatively, with an undergleam of malicious significance.
“So stupid of me—I can’t imagine why I should have expected my husband to write to me!” Bessy went on, leaning back in lazy contemplation of her other letters, but still obliquely including Justine in her angle of vision.
[ 371 ]
