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Her anxiety for Keith's safety relieved, her whole reaction was indignantly toward Sansome. "I'm sorry to have you go," she said, with a feeling that other circumstances could not have called out, "I don't know what I'd have done without you!" Sansome's sensitive intuitions thrilled to the feeling. "Your husband is here to take care of you now," he murmured. "I must be off."
She shut her mouth as firmly as though this were the last sentence she ever proposed to utter; but her eyes, as they rested on Keith's face, had the least twinkle in them. Keith did not know how much of their old affair had been told her, but she evidently knew something, and it was necessary to show her that he had recovered from it long ago and yet retained a friendly feeling for Mrs. Lancaster.
Somehow it did not tally with certain notions formed in Keith's head on the night when the church was burning. At last he up to his father and asked: "Is this where you always work?" "No," was the answer given with a peculiar grimness. "This is for the officials." "What are they?" "Oh, tellers and cashiers and bookkeepers." Keith noted the words for future inquiries.
Keith's voice was strong and steady, and the outstretched hand gripped hers with a clasp that hurt. Then, in some way never quite clear to her, Susan found herself in the big living-room with Keith and the doctor and Daniel Burton, all shaking hands and all talking at once. They sat down then, and their sentences became less broken, less incoherent.
"Oh, 'course they're nothin' but babies now, but by an' by ! Still, if he ever found out she was Dorothy Parkman, an' of course he'd have to find it out if he married Oh, lan' sakes, what fools some folks be!" With which somewhat cryptic statement Susan turned and marched irritably into the house. Dr. Stewart's second operation on Keith's eyes took place late in November. It was not a success.
He could drag it into the light and laugh it away. But subconsciously it persisted as a horror from which he could not escape. A man cannot touch pitch, even against his own will, and not be defiled. "You're Keith's hero, you know," the girl told Dave, her face bubbling to unexpected mirth. "He tries to walk and talk like you. He asks the queerest questions.
"You must go down the stairs quietly," his mother called out from above, whereupon Keith's heart resumed its normal position. He descended the rest of that flight on tip-toe. The second one was taken more rapidly, and down the last one he went two steps at a time, the little iron plates under his heels hitting the stones with a ring that echoed through the old house.
He clung also to the hope that Keith would give him his powerful flagship to return to England, in which case the Hamiltons would go with him. "I go with our dear friends Sir William and Lady Hamilton," he wrote to Lord Minto; "but whether by water or land depends on the will of Lord Keith. Keith's opinion of Nelson's obedience was probably somewhat different.
She continued to look from the window, her face full of gravity. She was hearing again Keith's voice as he planned their future; but she was not sanguine now. It all seemed too far away, and so much had happened. So much had happened that seemed as though it could never be realised, never be a part of memory at all, so blank and sheer did it now stand, pressing upon her like overwhelming darkness.
Then Shadrach, having given his partner a look and received one in return, cleared his throat and spoke. "Mary-'Gusta," he said, "me and your Uncle Zoeth have got some news for you. I cal'late you've been wonderin' a little mite what that business of Mr. Keith's and mine was, ain't you?" Mary-'Gusta smiled. "I have wondered just a little," she observed, with mild sarcasm.
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