Poor Aggie hardened her face before Susie's eyes, for she felt that they were spying out and judging her. And Susie, seeing that set look, remembered how badly Aggie had once behaved to her John. Therefore she was tempted to extol him.

"But then," said she, magnificently, "I have my husband." (As if Aggie hadn't hers!) "n.o.body knows what John is but me. Do you know, there hasn't been one unkind word pa.s.sed between us, nor one cross look, ever since he married me eight years ago."

"There are very few who can say that." Aggie tried to throw a ring of robust congratulation into her flat tones.

"Very few. But there's no one like him."

"No one like you, either, I should say."

"Well, for him there isn't. He's never had eyes for any one but me--never."

Aggie cast down her eyes demurely at that. She had no desire to hurt Susie by reminding her of the facts. But Susie, being sensitive on the subject, had provided for all that.

"Of course, dear, I know, just at first, he thought of you. A fancy. He told me all about it; and how you wouldn't have him, _he_ said. He said he didn't think you thought him gentle enough. That shows how much you knew about him, my dear."

"I should always have supposed," said Aggie, coldly, "he would be gentle to any one he cared for."

She knew, and Susie knew, she had supposed the very opposite; but she wished Susie to understand that John had been rejected with full realization of his virtues, because, good as he was, somebody else was still better. So that there might be no suspicion of regret.

"Gentle? Why, Aggie, if that was what you wanted, he's as gentle as a woman. Gentler--there aren't many women, I can tell you, who have the strength that goes with that."

Aggie bent her head lower yet over her work. She thought she could see in Susie's speech a vindictive and critical intention. All the time she had, Aggie thought, been choosing her words judicially, so that each unnecessary eulogy of John should strike at some weak spot in poor Arthur.

She felt that Susie was not above paying off her John's old scores by an oblique and cowardly blow at the man who had supplanted him. She wished that Susie would either leave off talking about John, or go.

But Susie still interpreted Aggie's looks as a challenge, and the hymn of praise swelled on.

"My dear--if John wasn't an angel of goodness and unselfishness--When I think how useless I am to him, and of all that he has done for me, and all that he has given up--"

Aggie was trembling. She drew up the coat to shelter her.

"--why it makes my blood boil to think that any one should know him, and not know what he is."

Aggie dropped the coat in her agitation. As she stooped to pick it up, Susie put out an anxious arm to help her.

Their eyes met.

"Oh, Aggie, dear--" said Susie. It was all she _could_ say. And her voice had in it consternation and reproach.

But Aggie faced her.

"Well?" she said, steadily.

"Oh, nothing--" It was Susie's turn for confusion. "Only you said--and we thought--after what you've been told--"

"What was I told?"

Horror overcame Susie, and she lost her head.

"Weren't you told, then?"

Her horror was reflected in her sister's eyes. But Aggie kept calm.

"Susie" she said, "what do you mean? That I wasn't told of the risk? Is that what you meant?"

"Oh, Aggie--" Susie was helpless. She could not say what she had meant, nor whether she had really meant it.

"Who _should_ be told if I wasn't? Surely I was the proper person?"

Susie recovered herself. "Of course, dear, of course you were."

"Well?" Aggie forced the word again through her tight, strained lips.

"I'm not blaming you, Aggie, dear. I know it isn't your fault."

"Whose is it, then?"

Susie's soft face hardened, and she said nothing.

Her silence lay between them; silence that had in it a throbbing heart of things unutterable; silence that was an accusation, a judgment of the man that Aggie loved.

Then Aggie turned, and in her immortal loyalty she lied.

"I never told him."

"Never told him? Oh, my dear, you were very wrong."

"Why should I? He was ill. It would have worried him. It worried me less to keep it to myself."

"But--the risk?"

"Oh," said Aggie, sublimely, "we all take it. Some of us don't know. I did. That's all."

She drew a deep breath of relief and satisfaction. For four months, ever since she had known that some such scene as this must come, she had known that she would meet it this way.

"Hush," she said. "I think I hear the children."

IX

They came in, a pathetic little procession, three golden-haired couples, holding one another's hands.

First, Arty and Emmy, then Catty and Baby, then Willie and d.i.c.k, all solemn and shy. Baby turned his back on the strange aunt and burrowed into his mother's lap. They were all silent but d.i.c.k. d.i.c.k wanted to know if his Auntie liked birfdays, and if people gave her fings on her birfday--pausing to simulate a delicate irrelevance before he announced that _his_ birfday was to-morrow.

"d.i.c.kie, dear," said his mother, nervously, "we don't talk about our birthdays before they've come."

She could not bear Susie to be able to say that one of her children had given so gross a hint.