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Updated: June 17, 2025
She could forge ahead, undeterred by any sense of duty; she had not to interrupt herself to laugh at Ephie's wit, nor was she troubled by Johanna's cold eye that eye which told more plainly than words, how her elder daughter regarded her self-indulgence. Propped up in bed on two pillows, she now laid down her book, and put out her hand to draw Ephie to her. "Did you enjoy it, darling?
This was his first experience of Wagner; it would be interesting to hear what he has to say." Louise was moody and preoccupied, but Dove's words made her smile. "Let us ask him," she said. They quickened their steps and overtook the others. And when Dove, without further ado, had marched round to Ephie's side, Louise, left slightly to herself, called Maurice back to her. "Mr.
Tully, was her only confidant; and that, only in so far as this lady, knowing that what she called "a little romance" was going on, had undertaken to enclose any letters that might arrive during Ephie's absence. Johanna had no suspicions, or rather she had hitherto had none.
"Please fetch a droschke," Johanna said grimly, as Ephie's sobs showed no signs of abating; and when, after a lengthy search in the night, Maurice returned, she was standing in the same position, staring with drawn, unblinking eyes at the smoky lamp, which no one had thought of lowering. Ephie was still crying, and only Maurice might go near her.
He had come to meet her with many good resolutions, determined not to let the little affair, so lightly begun, lead to serious issues; but Ephie's tears, and the tale they told, and the sobbed confessions that slipped out unawares, made it hard for him to be wise. He put his arm round her, dried her tears with his own handkerchief, kissed the hand he held.
But Ephie's fit of ill-temper, for such it undoubtedly was, made Johanna see things differently; it hinted at unsuspected, cold scrutinies in the past, and implied a somewhat laming care of one's words in the days to come, which would render it difficult ever again to be one's perfectly natural self.
It was much better for him that the uncertainties of the bygone months did not begin anew; then, too, she had called him to her when she was in trouble, and not for anything in the world would he presume on her appeal. Besides, his presence would recall to her the unpleasant details connected with Ephie's visit, which he hoped she had by this time begun to forget.
And the belief was pardonable on Ephie's part, for Schilsky made it a point of honour to stare any pretty girl into confusion; besides which, he had a habit of falling into sheep-like reveries, in which he saw no more of what or whom he looked at, than do the glassy eyes of the blind. More than once, Ephie had blushed and writhed in blissful torture under these stonily staring eyes.
Through a kind of mist, Maurice saw that Ephie's face still wore a hostile look; and she hardly moved her lips when she bade him good-night. Madeleine drew her own conclusions as she walked the rest of the way home between two pale and silent people. She had seen, on coming out of the theatre, that Louise was in one of her bad moods a fact easily to be accounted for by Schilsky's absence.
She pictured Ephie's face, arch and smiling, lifted to his; and she understood and excused his weakness. He had not been able to help what had happened: this was the prettiness that drew him in, the kind he had invariably turned to look back at, in the street something fair and round, adorably small and young, something to be petted and protected, that clung, and was childishly subordinate.
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