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Deleah asks, lays down knife and fork, spreads hands abroad, as if inviting with exaggerated humility an inspection of her poor claims to favouritism. "But if it were Mr. Boult I think I can understand why it might be Deleah," Mrs. Day said slowly, looking down.
She would be so happy, married. But ?" She paused questioningly upon the "but," knowing it to be a very large one. "I don't think Reggie means anything, mama." "No," acquiesced Mrs. Day, sadly shaking her head. "I can't think how Bessie can be so blind. Yet, if it were otherwise, what an escape out of Bridge Street it would be for her." Deleah was silent. "Or for you?"
Two deep purple blooms of clematis. The creeper so carefully trained to climb beside a certain hall door came into her mind. She had noticed on an occasion she would fain have forgotten, without knowing she had done so, that it bore two buds. Deleah looked at the blossoms with an odd feeling of repulsion. She walked round the table to the side that was farthest from them.
"I don't want Deda to know. She's such a blab, mama." "Oh, my dear, I don't like to hear you say that!" "But she is. And she listens to things." Here Bessie pushed the door behind her open, to reveal the culprit in her white nightgown on the other side of it. "I should be ashamed to be a Paul Pry!" Bessie said with indignation and scorn. Deleah was not at all abashed.
What mother could be angry with Deleah, looking at her rose and white face amid the tumult of tossed dark curls upon her pillow! Then Bessie led her mother into an unoccupied room, hard by, upon the landing, and began to unfold her tale. "Mama, it is about Reggie." The room was only lit by the flame of the candle Mrs.
"You don't believe me?" "I believe you fast enough; oh, yes." "Then why are you angry?" "You might have come to me. Why didn't you come to me?" "Oh, I don't know," Deleah said. The several reasons she could have given it seemed kinder to withhold. He pounced upon her, his eyes blazing. "I don't like these 'secrets' between a man and a girl." Deleah drew back with a little offence.
"A little, mama. They were a pair of Bessie's last year's ones, that were too small for her." "There you go! At me again!" Bessie cried. "Deda is proud because her foot is smaller than mine, mama. If you're a little weed of a thing like Deda, of course your feet are narrow and small. They have to be. There's no merit in it." "And I suppose Deleah danced her silk stockings into holes?" "No, mama!
Emily put an inquiring head in at the door. "He haven't gone? Mr. Gibbon haven't gone, Miss Deleah? Well, now, when the mistress told me he was up along of you, I hoped 'twas another weddin' comin' off. You shouldn't have let him go so quick, my dear." Deleah had a dazed look about the eyes. "He was horrible! I believe he is mad," she said. Emily clapped her hands together.
"You should have told him, of course." "I didn't. I don't know why. I felt I could not. I hardly said anything, I think." "But now I would marry him!" Bessie cried. "No man should put an insult like that on me for nothing." Her face had flushed pink. She felt the insult to the family very keenly. "Now you've got to marry him, Deleah.
"We may be able to wipe the rest off our minds in time, but we shall never be allowed to forget the fifty pounds of the detestable Boult." "He was poor papa's friend the only one. He was good to papa," Deleah said, but to herself alone. For in that unhappy household was a law, unwritten, unspoken, but binding none the less, that the name of the husband and father should never be spoken.
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