[78] Chapter VII It was late afternoon and, alone in the kitchen, Sylvia yawned. It Since noontime she had sat reading and straining her ears for a sound in the room overhead, but there had been none. He was sleeping after his hearty dinner and that was encouraging. Doctor Stetson had hoped the wrist would not be painful enough to interfere with the rest the patient so obviously needed, and apparently this hope was being realized. Sylvia was glad he was asleep—very glad indeed. She did not begrudge him a moment of his slumber. But what a delightful person he was when awake! His eyes were wonderful—so dark and penetrating. They bored right through you. And then he listened with such intentness, watching every curve of your lips as if fearing to lose a word. Such attention was distinctly flattering. Even though your chatter was trivial, he dignified it and transformed it into something of importance. How interested, for example, he had been in Marcia; in learning she had been married and now lived a widow in the old Daniels Homestead! And what[79] a host of inquiries he had made about Jason—the sort of man he was and how long ago he had died! [79] Sylvia had not been able to answer all his questions, but of course she had asserted that Marcia had adored her husband because—well, not so much because she actually knew it, as because widows always did. Certainly Marcia had declared she loved the Homestead so deeply she never intended to leave it, and was not that practically the same thing as saying she loved Jason, too? Anyway, how she had felt toward him was not really a matter of any great importance now because he was dead. The thing that really mattered was Mr. Heath's interest in her—Sylvia; in her trip East and her description of Alton City, the little mid-western town which was her home. How he had laughed at her rebellion at being a school-teacher, and how insidiously he had hinted she might not always be one! And when she had tossed her curls at him as she often tossed them at Billie Sparks, the soda fountain clerk, how cleverly he had remarked that sunlight was especially
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