She asked the question without change of tone. I could only reply that I didn't know.
"The doctor says--that is, he's told me--that in a way it's mental. It's the result of the strain he's put upon his nerves by overwork and awful tempers. Of course, his responsibilities have been heavy, though of late years he's been able to shift some of them to other people's shoulders. And then," she went on, in her sweet, even voice, "what happened about me--coming to him so late in life--and--and tearing him to pieces more violently than if he'd been a younger man--young men get over things--that made it worse. Don't you see it would?"
I said I could understand that that might be the effect.
"Of course, if I could really be a wife to him--"
"He terrifies me. When he's there I'm not a woman any more; I'm a captive."
"I didn't marry him; he married me. I was as much a bargain as if I had been bought. And now mamma sees that--that she might have got a better price."
A sigh bubbled up, like that of a child who has been crying.
"It makes it hard for me." She eyed me with a long, oblique regard. "Don't you think it's awful when an elderly man falls in love with a young girl who herself is in love with some one else?"
"Ah, but this! An elderly man!--in love! Madly in love! It's not natural; it's frightful; and when it's with yourself--"
She moved away from me and began to inspect the room. In spite of her agitation she did this more in detail than when she had been there before, making the round of the book-shelves much as Mr. Grainger himself was in the habit of doing, and gazing without comment on the Persian and Italian potteries. It was easy to place her as one of those women who live surrounded by beautiful things to which they pay no attention. Mr. Brokenshire's richly Italianate dwelling was to her just a house. It would have been equally just a house had it been Jacobean or Louis Quinze or in the fashion of the Brothers Adam, and she would have seen little or no difference in periods and styles. The books she now looked at were mere backs; they were bindings and titles. Since they belonged to Stacy Grainger she could look at them with soft, unseeing eyes, thinking of him. That was all. Without comment of my own I accompanied her, watching the quick, bird-like turnings of her head whenever she thought she heard a step.