"Eva Tenny, you tell me this minute what the matter is."
Then Eva raised herself on one elbow, and disclosed a face distorted with wrath and woe, like a mask of tragedy.
"He's gone! he's gone!" she shrieked out, in an awful, shrill voice, which was like the note of an angry bird. "He's gone!"
"Yes, he's gone! he's gone! Oh, my God! my God! he's gone!"
All at once the little Amabel appeared, slipping past Ellen silently. She stood watching her mother. She was vibrating from head to foot as if strung on wires. She was not crying, but she kept catching her breath audibly; her little hands were twitching in the folds of her frock; she winked rapidly, her lids obscuring and revealing her eyes until they seemed a series of blue sparks. She was no paler than usual--that was scarcely possible--but her skin looked transparent, pulses were evident all over her face and her little neck.
"You don't mean he's gone with--?" gasped Fanny.
Suddenly Eva raised herself with a convulsive jerk from the floor to her feet. She stood quite still. "Yes, he has gone," she said, and all the passion was gone from her voice, which was much more terrible in its calm.
"Yes; he has gone with Aggie." Eva spoke in a voice like a deaf-mute's, quite free from inflections. There was something dreadful about her rigid attitude. Little Amabel looked at her mother's eyes, then cowered down and began to cry aloud. Ellen came in and took her in her arms, whispering to her to soothe her. She tried to coax her away, but the child resisted violently, though she was usually so docile with Ellen.
Eva did not seem to notice Amabel's crying. She stood in that horrible inflexibility, with eyes like black stones fixed on something unseeable.
Fanny clutched her violently by the arm and shook her.
"Eva Tenny," said she, "you behave yourself. What if he has run away? You ain't the first woman whose husband has run away. I'd have more pride. I wouldn't please him nor her enough. If he's as bad as that, you're better off rid of him."
Eva turned on her sister, and her calm broke up like ice under her fire of passion.
"Don't you say one word against him, not one word!" she shrieked, throwing off Fanny's hand. "I won't hear one word against my husband."