Mr. Harper did not ride home by midnight, as his wife was well assured
he would not do, though with some idle hope put into her mind by
Eulalie, she sat at the window until the stars whitened in the dawn.
At noon--which seemed to come slowly, every hour a day--Mr. Dugdale
appeared with a message, which by some wondrous good fortune he
remembered to deliver--that Nathanael had returned from Weymouth to
Kingcombe, and was waiting there. Agatha gathered with difficulty that
her husband wished her to return with Mr. Dugdale.
“I will not go.”
“That's right! I wouldn't do it upon any account,” said Eulalie, with
not the kindest of laughs. “I wouldn't be sent for like a school-girl.
Let Nathanael come himself and fetch you. What a rude fellow he is!”
“Eulalie!--You forget you are speaking of your brother and my husband. I
will be ready in five minutes, Mr. Dugdale.”
Duke lifted his placid but observant eyes, and smiled. “That's good.
Come along, my child.”
He had never spoken so kindly to her before. It was as if he read her
trouble. Her anger faded--she was near bursting in tears. In a little
while she had taken the good man's arm--which Eulalie pointedly informed
her was not the fashion at Kingcombe--and was walking with him to meet
her husband.
Marmaduke talked but little; marching on leisurely in a meditative mood,
and leaving his young sister-in-law to follow his example. Once or twice
she felt stealing down upon her one of his kindly, paternal glances,
and heard him saying to himself his usual winding-up of every mental
difficulty:
“Eh!--We know nothing! Nobody knows anything. But everything always
comes clear sometime.”
At the verge of the town, apparently coming to meet them, she saw
Nathanael--saw him a long way off. Her heart leaped at the first vision
of the tall slender figure and light hair; but when he approached she
was walking steadfastly along. Her eyes lowered, and her mouth firm set.
He came up, silently gave her his arm, and she took it as silently.
Mr. Dugdale and her husband immediately began to talk, so there was no
need for Agatha to do anything but walk on, trying to remember where she
was, and what course of conduct she had to pursue; trying above all to
repress these alternate storms of anger and lulls of despair, and deport
herself not like a passionate child, but a reasonable woman--a woman
who, after all, might have been heavily wronged.
Sometimes she essayed to consider this--to recall, as is so difficult
always, the original cause of difference, the little cloud which had
produced this tempest--but everything was in an inextricable maze.
Ere long, Nathanael's silence warned her that they two were alone, Mr.
Dugdale having made himself absent, and being seen afar off, diving into
a knot of market-politicians. Arm-in-arm the husband and wife passed
on through the street. Agatha pulled her veil down, and caught more
steadfast hold of her husband's arm--he was her husband, and she would
maintain their honour in the world's sight. She felt how many curious
eyes were watching them from windows--how many gossiping tongues would
be passing comment on the looks and demeanour of Mr. and Mrs. Locke
Harper.
“Shall we go over the house now, or would you like to call for my
sister?”
“No--we will go at once,” returned Agatha.
Steadfastly--mechanically--the young husband and wife looked over their
future home, which was all but ready for habitation. It was not a mean
abode now; to Mr. Wilson's furniture had been added various comforts
and luxuries. Agatha asked no questions--scarcely noticed anything. She
merely moved about, trying to sustain her position in the eyes of the
work-people that showed her round the house; stopping a minute to speak
kindly to the servant who was already installed there, and who, dropping
a dozen respectful curtsies, explained that she was the daughter of
“Master Nathanael's” nurse.
Everything seemed arranged for Mrs. Harper's comfort, as by invisible
hands. She never inquired, or even thought, who was the origin of
it all. She could not believe she was in her own home;--her married
home;--she felt as if each minute she should wake and find herself
Agatha Bowen, in the old rooms in Bedford Square, with all things else a
dream.
“Oh, that it were,” she sighed within herself. “Oh that I had never”--
She paused here--she could not wish that she had never seen Nathanael.
They quitted the cottage and went out into the street, for country
and town blended together in tiny Kingcombe. Mr. Harper closed the
wicket-gate, and looked back upon the little house. There was an unquiet
glitter in his eye, and his chest heaved violently for a few moments.
Then, with all outward observance, he linked his wife's arm in his, and
they proceeded onwards.
At the end of East Street they met Harriet Dugdale--the Dugdales seemed
always wandering about Kingcombe after one another, and turning up at
intervals at odd corners.
“Here you both are! I was looking for my husband. Has anybody seen Duke.
Oh, where on earth is Duke gone to? He said he would be back in five
minutes--which means five hours.”
“I left him at the market-place.”
“That's an hour ago. He has been home two or three times since then. Do
you think he could get on for a whole hour without wanting the Missus?
Oh, there he is. Stop, and I'll catch him.”
He was caught, and led forward prisoner by his pretty wife, who never
once let him go, lest he should slide away again, and become absorbed in
the mysterious electioneering groups that haunted the town.
“Now--Harrie--Missus, just wait--I'll be back in a minute.”
“Not a minute! Anne has sent word that she wants you directly--you and
Nathanael. You'll go, brother!”
“Whither?”
“To Thornhurst, to meet Mr. Trenchard and some other folk. You must
start immediately.”
Mr. Harper glanced towards his wife, who had dropped his arm; not
pointedly, but as though release were welcome.
“What, couldn't it leave its pet again?” cried Harrie, laughing. “Bless
it, nobody demands that terrible sacrifice. Do you think Anne would
invite husbands without their wives? We are all to go--if you agree,
Agatha.”
“Oh, yes!” It was quite indifferent to her where she went, or what she
did.
So they all four started in one of those inimitable conveyances called
dog-carts, which seem to offer every facility for “accidental death,”
either by flying over the horse's head, tumbling under the wheels, or
slipping off behind.
“Where will you sit, my dear? Beside your husband, I suppose? Mine
drives.”
Agatha answered by springing up beside Mr. Dugdale, with some vague jest
about husbands being no company at all. The dark fit had passed, and she
was now in a mood of desperation.
They dashed on quickly; Marmaduke was a daring driver.
Sometimes Agatha even thought he would overturn them in the road. Little
she cared! She was in that state of excitement when the utmost peril
would only have made her laugh. Passing under the three hills, and
looking up at the old castle, silent and grey, the daylight shining
through the fissured apertures that had been windows, she turned round
and recklessly proposed to Harrie their scrambling up the green slope
and rolling down again.
“E--h, my child!” said Duke Dugdale, turning his mild benevolent looks
on the flushed face beside him. “Don't'ee try that, don't'ee, now! When
people once set themselves rolling down-hill they never stop till they
get to the bottom. It's always so in this world.”
Agatha laughed more loudly. She wished her husband to hear how merry she
was. She talked incessantly to Mr. Dugdale or Harrie, and held herself
very upright, so that Nathanael, who sat behind her, might not
even feel the touch of her shoulder. She, who had hitherto been so
indifferent to everybody, so mild in her likings and dislikes--never
till now had she felt such strange emotions. Yet each and all carried
with them a fierce charm. It was like a person learning for the first
time what thirst was, and drinking fire, because, in any case, he must
drink. And with all her wrath there seemed a spell over heart, brain,
and senses, which never for a moment allowed her to cease thinking
of her husband. Every movement he made, every word he uttered, she
distinctly felt and heard.
The way grew unfamiliar; they were passing through a track of country,
wilder, and more peculiar than any Mrs. Harper had yet seen in
Dorsetshire--a road cut through furzy eminences, looking down on deep,
abrupt valleys, that might have been the bed of dried-up lakes or bays;
long heathery sweeps of undulating ground, with great stones lying here
and there; cultivation altogether ceasing--even sheep becoming rare; and
ever when they chanced to rise on higher ground, a sharp, salt, sea-wind
blowing, not a human being to be seen for miles.
“Here's the gate. I'll open it. Now we get into Anne Valery's property,”
said Harrie, as she leaped down and leaped up again, mocking Nathanael's
“brown study.”
“What a change!” Agatha cried. “I have not seen such trees in
Dorsetshire.”
“They seem indeed to have grown on purpose for Anne. Her grandfather
built Thornhurst. A queer desolate spot to choose, but it's a perfect
little nest of beauty. There!”
The road opened upon a semicircular green plane, levelled among the
hills, as it were on purpose, and planted round with a sheltering
bulwark of trees--lime, chestnut, oak--rising higher and higher, until
at the summit, where the sea-breeze caught them, grew nothing but the
perpetual Dorsetshire fir. On the edge of the semicircle stood the
house, this green plane before it, behind, a wide stretch of country,
where the tide, running for miles inland, made strange-shaped lakes and
broad rivers, spread out glistening in the afternoon sun.
“Anne, must always be near the sea. I don't think she would live even
here unless she knew that just climbing those rocks would bring her in
sight of the Channel. She has quite an ocean-mania.”
“I'll learn it from her. I want a convenient little mania. Suppose I
cure myself of my old grudge against the sea, and go from hatred into
love, or from love back again into hatred--as people do.”
“What a comical girl you are!”
“Very. Stay now. Wait till the horse is quiet, and I'll take a leap
down--just like a person leaping into”--
“Hold, Agatha”--and she felt her arm caught by her husband. It was the
first time he had touched or addressed her since they left Kingcombe.
“Don't spring down--it is not safe. Stay till I lift you.”
“I do not want your help.”
“Excuse me, you do; you are not used to this sort of carriage.'
“Stand aside--I _will_ jump down,” she cried, roused by the contest,
slight as it was, but enough to show the clashing of the two wills.
“Stand aside,” she repeated, leaning forward with glittering eyes,
giddy, and in so great confusion of mind as to be in real danger--“we
will see who gives way.”
“Are you in earnest?” Nathanael whispered.
“Quite. Go!”
“I would go if it were play. But when I see my wife about to do any
frantic thing to her own injury, I shall restrain her--thus.”
Balancing himself on the carriage-step, he clasped the little figure in
his arms--tight--strangely tight and close. Before Agatha could resist,
he had lifted her safely down, and set her free.
She stood passive--astonished. What could it be in that firm will, in
that sudden clasp, which made her feel--was it anger? No not anger,
though her cheeks glowed and her breast heaved. Why was it, that as
Nathanael walked onward towards the house, his wife looked after him
with such a mingling of attraction and repulsion? What could it be, this
strange power which gave him the preeminence over her--which taught her,
without her knowing it, the mystery that causes man to rule and woman
to obey; Very thoughtful--even unmoved by Harrie's loud laughter at
the “excellent joke”--Mrs. Harper suffered herself to be led on by her
sister-in-law.
“Nonsense, child, don't look so serious. Men will have their
way--especially husbands. Mine gets obeyed as little as any one; but now
and then, when it comes to the point”--here Harrie looked astonishingly
grave, for her--“I'm obliged to give in to Pa; and somehow Pa's always
right, bless him!”
How every word of one happy wife went like a dagger into the other
wife's heart! But there was no shield. Here they were in Anne Valery's
house, obliged to appear as cheerful guests, especially the newest
guest, the bride. Agatha tried, and tried successfully, to play her
part:--misery makes such capital hypocrites!
“Isn't this a large house for a single woman?” said Mrs. Dugdale, as the
two ladies passed up-stairs. “Yet Anne constantly manages to fill it,
especially in summer-time. The dozens of sick friends she has staying
here to be cured by sea-breezes! the scores of young people that come
and make love in those green alleys down the garden! But then in the
lulls of company the house is dull and silent--as now.”
It was very silent, though not with the desolation which often broods
over a large house thinly inhabited. The room--Anne's bedroom--lay
westward, and a good deal of sunshine was still glinting in. A few late
bees were buzzing about the open window, cheated perhaps by the feathery
seeds of the clematis, which had long ceased flowering. There was no
other sound. But many fine prints, a few painted portraits, and several
white-gleaming statuettes, seemed as the sunlight struck them to burst
the silence, with mute speech.
“Oh, you are looking at Anne's 'odds and ends' as I call them. Rather a
contrast, her walls and ours. I don't see the use of prints and plaster
images--always in the way where there are children. But Anne is so
dreadfully fond of pretty things. She says they're company. No wonder! A
solitary old maid must find herself very dull at times.”
“Must she?--then she is the more glad to see her visitors”--a pleasant
voice, a silken-rustling step, which in Agatha's fancy seemed always to
enter like daylight into a dusky room--and Miss Valery came to welcome
her guests.
She addressed Mrs. Harper first, and then Harrie, who looked confused
for the moment. But it was not a trifle that could upset the equanimity
of the honest-speaking Harrie Dugdale.
“Bless us, Anne, how softly you walk!' Listeners,' etc.--You know the
saying! But you might listen at every door in Dorsetshire, and never
hear worse of yourself than I said just now.”
“Thank you. When I want a good character I shall be sure to come to
Harriet Dugdale.--And now, what is the news with the little wife! whom I
have yet to bid welcome to Thornhurst. Welcome Mrs. Locke Harper.”
Anne said the name, as she often did, with a peculiar under-tone of
hesitation and tenderness; then, according to her frequent habit, she
put her hand on her favourite's shoulder, and began to play with the
brown curls. “Have you been quite well and happy since I saw you?”
The question, so simple, so full of kindness, pierced Agatha's soul.
Alas? how much had happened since she sat on the stone seat at Corfe
Castle, and looked over the view with Anne Valery! How little did Anne
or any one know that she was wretched--maddened--hating herself and the
whole world--believing in nothing good, nothing holy--not even in her
who spoke. The words, the smile, appeared the mocking hypocrisy of one
who had persuaded her to marry, and must ere long know of that hasty
marriage the miserable result This thought steeled her heart even
against Anne Valery.
She burst into a sharp laugh. “Well! Happy! Cannot you see? You are the
best person to answer your own question.” And she moved away out of the
room.
Anne looked after her, thoughtfully, rather sadly. Perhaps she was used
to have her pets glide from her, dancing out indifferently into the
merry world. She made no attempt to follow Agatha, but led the way
down-stairs into the drawing-room.
“Mr. Trenchard, come and let me introduce you to Mrs. Locke Harper.”
As Miss Valery said this, an elderly gentleman, dapper, dandy, and
small, escaped from under the hands of Duke Dugdale--those big earnest
hands that were laid upon him in all the apostleship of sincere
argument--and came, nothing loth, as his eager bow showed, to do the
polite to the young bride who had been lately brought to the county.
For Mr. Trenchard, besides the wondrously sweetening power of his
candidateship, came of a very ancient name in Dorsetshire. He was
evidently a beau too--one of those harmless general adorers whom the
influence of a graceful woman touches even unto old age.
Agatha saw in his first look that he admired her, and she was in
that proud desperate mood when a girl is ready to catch hold of the
attentions or conversation of any one--even an elderly gentleman. She
was very gracious to Mr. Trenchard--nay, altogether bewitching--though
for the first ten minutes she herself saw and heard nothing save a thing
in black with white hair, talking to her of the beauties of Dorsetshire.
More distinctly than aught he said, she heard what was passing in the
group at the other end of the room--especially her husband's voice,
so quiet and deep, always a tone deeper than any other voices, falling
through all the rest like a note of music. And she soon found out that
Anne was listening also--to Nathanael, of course. She always did.
Mr. Trenchard followed the direction of the two ladies' eyes, and
ingeniously took up the text.
“I assure you, Mrs. Harper, it is a pleasure to all the neighbourhood
that your husband has come back from America. I remember him quite a
child, and his uncle a young man. And really, how like he is, in both
feature and voice, to what his uncle used to be at that time. As he
stands there talking, I could almost fancy it was Mr. Locke Harper.”
“Mr. Locke Harper,” repeated Agatha. “Was that the name Uncle Brian went
by?”
“Yes, save with those privileged people who called him Brian. But they
were few. He had not the fortune or misfortune of possessing a thousand
and one intimate friends. Yet all respected him, and remember him still.
It will be a real satisfaction to have in the country a second Mr. Locke
Harper,--Dear me, how like he is! Don't you see it, Miss Valery?”
“There is a general likeness running through all the Harper family.”
“Except the eldest son, though even to him I can trace some resemblance
here”--and he bowed to Mrs. Dugdale. “And this reminds me that I knew
beforehand I should probably have the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Harper in
Dorsetshire. Only two days ago I saw at Paris Major Frederick Harper.”
“Is Major Harper at Paris?” eagerly cried Agatha, caught by the name,
which had so soon passed out of the daily interests of her life,
that its sound was already quite strange. It reached her now like a
comforting breath of old times--a something to catch hold of in the
wide, dreary maze around her. Her former guardian seemed to rise up
before her; with all his cheery, good-natured ways; his compassion
when she had been newly made an orphan; his kindness of manner that
remained--ay, to the very last.
In a rush of many feelings that softened her voice to positive
tenderness, she cried, “Oh do tell me all about Major Harper?”
And this time she did not notice that, in the political discussion going
forward, it was Mr. Dugdale who spoke, his brother-in-law having ceased
the argument and become silent.
“Madam,” returned the candidate, with a smile--perhaps a little too
meaning a smile--“I will, with pleasure, tell you everything. I guessed
from his anxious questions concerning you, and whether I had met you in
Dorsetshire, that before he was your brother-in-law Major Harper had the
happiness of being an intimate friend of yours.”
“He was my guardian.”
“That fact he did not inform me of. Indeed we had little time for
conversation. We merely dined together, and parted almost immediately.
He seemed in the midst of a whirl of pleasant engagements, as Major
Harper invariably is. Charming, agreeable man! An immense favourite with
all ladies.”
Agatha answered “Yes” rather coldly. Her attention was wandering; she
had missed the sound of her husband's voice altogether. But the next
moment she heard him behind her.
“Mr. Trenchard?”
“Well, my dear sir? Are you also come to ask questions about your
brother, whom, as I have been telling Mrs. Harper, I had the pleasure to
meet in Paris?”
“So I have just heard you say. Where, and how was he living?”
Agatha thought this a strange question for Nathanael to put to a third
party concerning his own brother. She was glad to hear Miss Valery
observe, with genuine tact, that Major Harper was always careless in the
matter of giving addresses.
“He was living--let me see--at 102 Rue--, one of the handsomest and
pleasantest streets in Paris. I remember he said he was obliged to take
this _appartement_ for three months, after which he was going to act the
hermit and economise. Very unlikely that, I should think, for a man of
Major Harper's social habits.”
“Very,” Agatha said, being looked to for a response. She was much
surprised to learn this of her brother-in-law; still more did she wonder
at the rigid silence with which her husband heard the same.
“I think, Mrs. Harper, we may safely say that his determination will not
last. A mere fit of misanthropy after rather too much gaiety. In such
a pleasant fellow as Frederick Harper we must excuse a few broken
resolutions.”
“We ought,” said Anne Valery, with that rare gentleness which makes men
listen to a woman even when she “preaches.” “It is a very hard trial for
any one to be thrown into the world with so many gifts as Major Harper.
A man whom all men like, and not a few women are prone to love, goes
through an ordeal so fierce, that if he withstand it he is one of the
greatest heroes on earth. If he fall”--and Anne lowered her voice so
that Agatha could scarcely hear, though she felt sure Nathanael did--“if
he fall, we ought, through all the wrong, clearly to discern the
temptation.”
It was a new doctrine, the last Agatha would have expected to hear on
the lips of such a sternly good woman as she had painted Miss Valery.
She said so, adding, with her usual plainness, “I thought, somehow, that
you did not like Major Harper?”
“Nay, we were young together. But hush, my dear, your husband is
speaking.”
He was saying, with quite an altered expression, something about “my
brother Frederick.” But after that mention Major Harper's name died out
of the conversation, as out of Agatha's memory. Alas, not the unfrequent
fate of the Major Harpers of society--meteors, never thought of but
while they are shining, and forgotten as soon as they have burnt
themselves out.
By this time the two or three stray visitors--gentlemen-farmers, Anne's
tenants, as Mrs. Dugdale whispered--had disappeared, and Mr. Trenchard
was the sole stranger left in the drawing-room. Miss Valery did the
honours of her house with a remarkably simple grace.
“I give no state dinner parties,” she said, smiling, to Mr. Trenchard.
“It is a whim of mine that I never could see the use of friends meeting
together merely to eat and drink, or of offering them more and richer
fare than is customary or necessary. But if you will stay and dine with
me, and with these my own people, country fashion, even though you have
been a ten years' resident in London”--
“But have never forgotten Dorset, and good Dorset ways,” said the old
gentleman, as he bowed over the hostess's hand. Then, obeying Anne's
signal, he offered his arm to Mrs. Harper to lead her in to dinner;--the
innocent daylight dinner, with real China-roses looking in at the
window, and an energetic autumn-robin singing his good-night before the
sun went down.
Agatha could have been happy, merry--she was still so young, and
the weight on her heart was the first that ever had fallen there. At
intervals she struggled to forget it--almost succeeded; and then the
first glimpse of her husband's face, the first tone of his voice,
brought the burden back again. Her spirits grew wilder than ever, lest
any one should guess she was so very, very miserable.
After dinner, dreading Anne's eyes, she rushed off into the garden with
Harrie Dugdale; tossing back her hair, and inhaling by gasps the cold
evening wind, that it might bring calm and clearness to her brain. Even
yet she felt as though she were dreaming.
Returning, she found lights in the drawing-room. Mr. Trenchard, in a
patient attitude, was listening to Marmaduke Dugdale; some distance
off, Nathanael sat talking to Miss Valery. Anne was leaning back in an
arm-chair: the lamp shining full on her face showed how very pale and
worn it was. Her voice, too, sounded feeble, as Agatha caught the words:
“In two months, you think? That is a long time.”
“It cannot be sooner, Marmaduke says. I met him on board the ship
at Weymouth; when he told me of this innocent little scheme he was
transacting.”
“But you will not tell”--
“Uncle Brian? No, of course not. Yet I think it would do Uncle Brian
good to know how dearly Marmaduke and all his friends here care for him.
Yet he might not believe it--I think he never did.”
Anne was silent.
“He used to say,” continued Nathanael, who was sitting where he
could not see his wife, and for once heard not her soft step over the
carpet--“Uncle Brian used to say, that it was wisest neither to love
nor need love. I think different. It is a cruel, hardening, embittering
thing for a man to feel that no one loves him.”
--“Love--love! Have you two sage ones been discussing that folly? Now,
may I have the honour to hear?”
“If Anne will talk; I have done speaking,” said Mr. Harper, as he gave
Agatha his chair, and slowly moved away to the other circle.
Thus, ever thus, he went from her, escaping the chance of either being
wounded or healed. Agatha was nearly wild. With all her might she flung
herself into conversation with Mr. Trenchard, and tried to conjugate
that verb--hitherto a mystery to her innocent mind--_to flirt_. She
wished to make herself beautifully hateful--bewitchingly foul; or rather
she did not care what she made herself, if she only made _him_--who had
now in her thoughts sank to the namelessness, which proves that one name
is fast filling up the whole world--made him stir from that mountain
height of impassive calm--melted him into repentance--shook him into
frenzied jealousy. Anything--anything--so that he no longer should stand
before her like a serene Alp, which nothing human could disturb, and
which--ah, in all her madness, she saw that but too clearly!--which
had always such a heavenly light shining on its forehead--a purity
“God-given,” like his name.
His name, which she had once so disliked, but which now caught a strange
beauty. Lately, she had looked out its meaning in a list of Bible names;
and many a time, the night before, she had said it to herself, crying
it out into the dark, until its soft Hebrew vowels grew musical, and its
holy Hebrew meaning grew divine. “Nathanael--Nathanael--_God-given_.”
Might he not indeed be a husband given unto her of God--to lead her in
the right way, and make a true noble woman of her; such as a woman is
always made by the love of, and the loving of, a noble man.
But these were sacred night-time thoughts which vanished in the
daylight, or only came in snatches and rifts, careering through the
blackness that surrounded her.
And still she talked to the fortunate Mr. Trenchard; made herself more
agreeable than she had ever believed possible. The elderly beau was
fascinated, and even Mr. Dugdale turned from election-papers, to look at
his fair sister-in-law with genuine admiration--now and then nodding to
Harrie, as if to see what she thought of this new light that had shot
across their country hemisphere. At which Mrs. Dugdale once or
twice pretended to be mightily jealous, until her husband, with his
inconceivable sweet smile, his way of patting her knees with his big
gentle hand, and the utterly inexpressible tone of his “Nay, now Missus”
made matters quite straight, and plunged back into his politics.
All this while Anne Valery sat in her arm chair--speaking little,
looking from one to the other of her guests with a wandering, thoughtful
eye, that, for once, noticed little the things around her, because her
mental vision was afar off.--Whither--
And Marmaduke went on with his benevolent schemes for improving
Dorsetshire and the world; and his Harrie had her dreams too--possibly
about the advantage an M.P.'s interest might prove in future days to
“the children;” and the young couple, in all the whirl of their misery,
still clung to hope and youth and life, so little of which way they had
trod, and so much of which lay before them. No one thought of her who
sat apart, looking smilingly on them all, but to whom they and the
things surrounding them were day by day growing more dim--who was
fading, fading, even while she smiled.