The dining-room was empty, likewise
the living-room; but as he mounted the stairs, he could hear the muffled
catch of a woman's sobs, and above them, intermittent, authoritative,
the voice of a man speaking. His moccasined feet gave no warning, and
even after he had entered the room where the dead man lay none of the
three who were already present knew that he was there.
Just within the doorway he paused and looked about him. In one corner of
the room, well away from the bed, sat Mary Landor. She did not look up
as he entered, apparently did not see him, did not see anything. The
first wild passion of grief past, she had lapsed into a sort of passive
lethargy. Her fingers kept picking at the edge of the loose dressing
sack she had put on, and now and then her thin lips trembled; but that
was all.
Only a glance the newcomer gave her, then his eyes shifted to the bed;
shifted and halted and, unconsciously as he had done when Howard first
broke the news, his feet came close together and his arms folded across
his chest in characteristic, all-observing attention. Not a muscle
moved, he scarcely seemed to breathe. He merely watched.
And this was what he saw: The shape of a dead man lying as at first
beneath the covers; only now the sheet had been raised until the face
was hid. Beside it, stretched out in abandon as she had thrown herself
down, her head all but buried from view, was the girl Bess.
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