that bed, and she knew by experience of making it every morning that it squeaked most unmercifully when it was moved. Neither could she go out through the spare bedroom, for she felt that her appearance would cause no end of explanations; and equally of course she dared not shut the door because it would make a noise and call attention to her presence. [166] So Mary Amber tiptoed softly to the farthest end of the little room, and stood rigidly silent, trying not to listen, yet[167] all the more attuned and sensitive to whatever was going on in the next room. She fairly held her breath lest they should hear her, and pressed her fingers upon her hot eyeballs as if that would shut out the sound. [167] “That’s scarcely the way I expected you to meet me, Lyme,” in the sweet lilt of Elinore Harrower’s petted voice. “I was scarcely expecting you, you know, after what has happened,” came chillingly in Lyman Gage’s voice, a bit high and hollow from his illness, and all the cooler for that. “I couldn’t stay away when I knew you were ill, Lyme, dear!” The voice was honeyed sweet now. “What had that to do with it?” The tone was almost vicious. “You wrote that we had grown apart, and it was true. You are engaged to another man.” “Well, can’t I change my mind?” The[168] tone was playful, kittenish. It smote Lyman Gage’s memory that he had been wont to call it teasing and enjoy it in her once upon a time. [168] “You’ve changed your mind once too often!” The sick man’s voice was tense in his weakness, and his brow was dark. “Why, Lyme Gage! I think you are horrid!” cried the girl with a hint of indignant tears in her voice. “Here I come a long journey to see you when you’re sick; and you meet me that way, and taunt me. It’s not like you. You don’t seem a bit glad to see me! Perhaps there’s some one else.” The voice had a taunt in it now, and an assurance that expected to win out in the end, no matter to what she might have to descend to gain her point. But she had reckoned without knowledge, for Lyman Gage remembered the picture he had torn to bits in the dying light of the sunset and trampled in[169] the road; those same brilliant eyes, that soft tinted cheek, those painted lips, had smiled impudently up to him that way as he
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