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A man properly trained in right habits of thinking and of action could
not think wrong and go wrong, David argued. He even went further. He
said that love was a habit, and that love would bring Dick back to him.
That he could not forget them.
She believed that, of course, if he still lived. But hadn't Mr. Bassett,
who seemed so curiously mixed in the affair, been out again to Norada
without result? No, it was all over, and she felt that it would be a
comfort to know where he lay, and to bring him back to some well-loved
and tended grave.
Elizabeth came often to see them. She looked much the same as ever,
although she was very slender and her smile rather strained, and she
and David would have long talks together. She always felt rather like an
empty vessel when she went in, but David filled her with hope and sent
her away cheered and visibly brighter to her long waiting. She rather
avoided Lucy, for Lucy's fears lay in her face and were like a shadow
over her spirit. She came across her one day putting Dick's clothing
away in camphor, and the act took on an air of finality that almost
crushed her.
So far they had kept from her Dick's real identity, but certain things
they had told her. She knew that he had gone back, in some strange way,
to the years before he came to Haverly, and that he had temporarily
forgotten everything since. But they had told her too, and seemed to
believe themselves, that it was only temporary.
At first the thought had been more than she could bear. But she had to
live her life, and in such a way as to hide her fears. Perhaps it was
good for her, the necessity of putting up a bold front, to join the
conspiracy that was to hold Dick's place in the world against the hope
of his return. And she still went to the Sayre house, sure that there
at least there would be no curious glances, no too casual questions.
She could not be sure of that even at home, for Nina was constantly
conjecturing.
"I sometimes wonder-" Nina began one day, and stopped.
"Wonder what?"
"Oh, well, I suppose I might as well go on. Do you ever think that if
Dick had gone back, as they say he has, that there might be somebody
else?"
"Another girl, you mean?"
"Yes. Some one he knew before."
Nina was watching her. Sometimes she almost burst with the drama she
was suppressing. She had been a small girl when Judson Clark had
disappeared, but even at twelve she had known something of the story.
She wanted frantically to go about the village and say to them: "Do you
know who has been living here, whom you used to patronize? Judson Clark,
one of the richest men in the world!" She built day dreams on that
foundation. He would come back, for of course he would be found and
acquitted, and buy the Sayre place perhaps, or build a much larger one,
and they would all go to Europe in his yacht. But she knew now that the
woman Leslie had sent his flowers to had loomed large in Dick's past,
and she both hated and feared her. Not content with having given her,
Nina, some bad hours, she saw the woman now possibly blocking her
ambitions for Elizabeth.