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"Is this true?" she already heard the Squire say in imagination, and she should have to answer: "Yes"—and there would be the open door and the finger pointing to her to go. She heard the Squire's familiar step on the stair; unconsciously, she crouched lower; had he come to tell her to go? But the Squire came in whistling, a picture of homely contentment, hands in pocket, smiling jovially. She knew there must be no telltale tears on her cheeks, even if her heart was crying out in the cold and snow. She knew the bitterness of being denied the comfort of tears. It was but one of the hideous train of horrors that pursued a woman in her position. She forced them back and met the Squire with a smile that was all the sweeter for the effort. "Here's your chair, Squire, all ready waiting for you, and the only thing you want to make you perfectly happy—is—guess?" She held out his old corncob pipe, filled to perfection. "I declare, Anna, you are just spoiling me, and some day you'll be going off and getting married to some of these young fellows 'round here, and where will I be then?" "You need have no fears on that score," she said, struggling to maintain a smile. "Well, well, that's what girls always say, but I don't know what we'll do without you. How long have you been with us, now?" "Let me see," counting on her fingers: "just six months." "So it is, my dear. Well, I hope it will be six years before you think of leaving us. And, Anna, while we are talking, I like to say to you that I have felt pretty mean more than once about the way I treated you that first day you come." "Pray, do not mention it, Squire. Your kindness since has quite made me forget that you hesitated to take an utter stranger into your household." "That was it, my dear—an utter stranger—and you cannot really blame me; here was Looizy and Kate and I was asked to take into the house with them a young woman whom I had never set eyes on before; it seemed to me a trifle risky, but you've proved that I was wrong, my dear, and I'll admit it." The girl dropped the stocking she was mending; her trembling hand refused to support even the pretense of work. Outside the snow was falling just as it was falling, perhaps, on the little grave where all her youth and hope were buried. The thought gave her courage to speak, though the pale lips struggled pitifully to frame the words. "Squire, suppose that when I came to you that day last June you had been right—I am only saying this for the sake of argument, Squire—but suppose that I had been a deceived girl, that I had come here to begin all over again; to live down the injustice, the scandal and all the other things that unfortunate woman have to live down, would you still have felt the same?" "Why, Anna, I never heard you talk like this before; of course I should have felt the same; if a commandment is broke, it's broke; nothing can alter that, can it?" "But, Squire, is there no mercy, no chance held out to the woman who has been unfortunate?" "Anna, these arguments don't sound well from a proper behaving young woman like you. I know it's the fashion nowadays for good women to talk about mercy to their fallen sisters, but it's a mistake. When a woman falls, she loses her right to respect, and that's the end of it." She turned her face to the storm and the softly falling flakes were no whiter than her face. As Anna turned to leave the room on some pretext, she saw Kate coming in with a huge bunch of Jacqueminot roses in her hand. Of course, Sanderson had sent them. The perfume of them sickened Anna, as the odor of a charnel house might have done. She tried to smile bravely at Kate, who smiled back triumphantly as she went in to show her uncle the flowers. But the sight of them was like the turning of a knife in a festering wound. Anna made her way to the kitchen. Dave was sitting there smoking. Anna found strength and sustenance in his mere presence, though she did not say a word to him, but he was such a faithful soul. Good, honest Dave.
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