Page:Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920).djvu/268

236 Christopher drew his reddish brows together.

“I just mean that Victoria says she won’t marry me if she has to live with you. She’s afraid of you. I told her you wouldn’t interfere with her, but she wasn’t satisfied. It’s your own fault, Eunice. You’ve always been so queer and close that people think you’re an awful crank. Victoria’s young and lively, and you and she wouldn’t get on at all. There isn’t any question of turning you out. I'll build a little house for you somewhere, and you'll be a great deal better off there than you would be here. So don’t make a fuss.”

Eunice did not look as if she were going to make a fuss. She sat as if turned to stone, her hands lying palm upward in her lap. Christopher got up, hugely relieved that the dreaded explanation was over.

“Guess I'll go to bed. You’d better have gone long ago. It’s all nonsense, this waiting up for me.”

When he had gone Eunice drew a long, sobbing breath and looked about her lilkelike [sic] a dazed soul. All the sorrow of her life was as nothing to the desolation that assailed her now.

She rose and, with uncertain footsteps, passed out through the hall and into the room where her mother died. She had always kept it locked and undisturbed; it was arranged just as Naomi Holland had