“Do just as you like,” I answered. “The furniture is yours, I believe?”
“Yes; but this place is really more than I want when I am by myself. Besides”—here she gave an affected shudder—“it seems, well, haunted, rather. If you are not coming here, I think I shall give it up and take a couple of rooms somewhere. I can look after your things till you get settled.”
I thanked her, and asked if she had made any plans for the future.
“None at all,” she said. “I feel rather stunned, just at the moment. It has been such a shock. I shall wait for a little time, anyhow, and see how things turn out. I shall be rather lost at first. We saw so few people—I have rather lost touch.”
“You have all my father’s friends,” I said.
“Oh, but they are not my friends. They only used to come to tea and dinner and so on. They wouldn’t want me. I should only be an intruder. And, of course, they are all much older than I am. We should have really nothing in common.”
“Yes,” I said, “you are a young woman, Margaret. You will probably marry again before very long.”
She made a great display of indignation.
“Paul! How can you say such a heartless thing, and your poor father only just passed away! Anybody would think you don’t care for him at all. But I suppose a father isn’t the same thing as a husband.”
I was nauseated.
“You need not trouble to display all this feeling on my account,” I said. “It was quite enough to make him as unhappy as you did while he was alive, without playing the brokenhearted widow.”