Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/339

 "I wish I could tell you what you need to know," she flamed out at him.

But she evidently found it useless to try any longer, and sank again huddled in her low chair. He got up carelessly and shook himself to start the blood through his great frame, numbed by immobility. His eye was caught by the expression of the old woman's face as she looked up at him. He stood still, considering her, "You're going to miss Marise," he said.

She turned back hastily towards the fire, to hide the sudden trembling of her lips, and presently said in a dry voice, "All I want is for her to have what is best for her."

He agreed to this with relief, "Sure! So do I. Poor kid. She never asked to be born."

Later, as he started up the stairs, his glass kerosene lamp in his hand, he said, "You know, Hetty, as well as I do that it doesn't make any difference what we do, or don't do for her. She's got to take what's coming to her just like everybody else."

His cousin looked down at the steady, commonplace little flame of her own lamp, "I don't suppose I'll ever see her again," she said in a low tone of profound sadness. But she added stoically, as she began to climb the stairs after him, "Not that that makes any difference to anybody but me."