hind the saving trivialities of daily
intercourse. She had gone so far as to introduce Claire to her cousin, a
Mrs. Richards, who had come in at the noon hour for a new tatting
design. This cousin was a large, red-faced woman, with an aggressively
capable manner. She had the quick, ferret-like eyes of Miss Munch and
the loose mouth of a perpetual gossip.

"She's the one I told you about the other day," Miss Munch had explained
later--"the housekeeper for _your friend_ Stillman's father-in-law." She
gave nasty emphasis to this trivial speech.

Flint had been direct and business-like almost to the point of
bruskness. But Claire knew that such moods were not unusual, so she took
little stock in the ultimate significance of his restrained manner.

Perhaps the most indefinable change had come over Claire's home life.
Her mother's unfailing string of trivial gossip, formerly not without a
certain interest, now scarcely held her to even polite attention.
Indeed, her self-absorbed silence, while Mrs. Robson poured out the
latest news about Mrs. Finnegan's second sister's husband's mother--who
was suddenly stricken with some incurable disease, made all the more
mysterious by the fact that its nature was not divulged--was so apparent
that her mother, goaded on to a mild exasperation, would ask,
significantly:

"What's the matter, Claire? Have you a headache?"

Mrs. Robson was never so happy as in the discovery of some one with a
mysterious disease, particularly if the victim's relatives were loath to
discuss the issue.

"They think they fool me!" she would say, triumphantly, to Claire, "but
I guess I know what ails her.... Didn't her mother, and her uncle, and
her sister's oldest child die of consumption? I tell you it's in the
family. The last time I saw her she nearly coughed her head off."

Not that Mrs. Robson was unsympathetic; brought face to face with
suffering, she blossomed with every impulsive tenderness, but her
experiences had confirmed her in pessimism, and every fresh tragedy
testified to the soundness of her faith. Her pride at diagnosing
people's ills and pronouncing their death-sentences was almost
professional. And she had an irritating way of making comments such as
this:

"Well, Claire, I see that old Mrs. Talbot is dead at last!... I knew she
wouldn't live another winter. They'll feel terribly, no doubt; but, of
course, it is a great relief."

Or:

"Why, here is the death notice of Isaac Rice! I