Seems like he were to'n thisaway and thataway. An' I were hopin' and prayin' she wouldn't leave him."
"You wanted her to stay?"
"Yes, honey. She loved him, and she was made for Mr. Louis. But he's allus havin' things and losin' 'em, and then wishin' he had 'em back. Seems like the only ones he's evah kep' on is Sampson and me."
Hildegarde wanted to ask about his second wife. Hadn't he kept her on? She felt, however, that this was not a thing to discuss with Delia.
"But you love him, don't you?" she said at last. "You've stayed with him so long."
"Lord, yes, honey. Me and Sampson belongs right heah, like the house and the trees and the garden gate. An' we knows Mistah Louis and his ways." She hesitated a moment, then gave a warning. "Don't evah let him see you loves him too much. 'T'aint good for him."
A breath of cold wind seemed to blow against the warm hope in Hildegarde's heart. Her interview with her father had shed a ray of light in the darkness in which she had moved since her mother's death. His gentleness, his need of her, the things he had said to her in those first moments of meeting—on these she had built a structure of dreams.
The water was booming in the bath. Delia went in to turn it off. When she came back, she said, "I'll sen' down to the station fo' yo' trunk honey."
"I just brought my bag," Hildegarde told her. "I didn't know whether I was going to stay or not. I can send home if I need more."
Weighing, mentally, the clothes she had taken out of
