"I had no appetite for dinner," she exclaimed, "so I began to feel a little faint, and had this brought to me. I don't really want it. You may finish it, Wake, darling."
He took the honeycomb in his fingers and began to devour it, Meg regarding him with indulgence, Renny with affectionate concern.
Renny asked: "Do you think that is wholesome?"
"Oh, yes. It's a natural food. It couldn't possibly hurt him."
"To think," she exclaimed, "that you have been in New York since I saw you last!" She regarded him as if she expected to find something exotic in him. "What you must have seen! But before any of that, tell me about Eden. This is a great shock. Is he very ill? If he is in danger, I don't know how to bear it. Poor lamb. And he was always so well. Everything started with that wretched marriage of his. The day he first brought that girl to Jalna, I saw trouble ahead." She screwed up her courage. "Renny, is Eden going to" She glanced at the child. He must not hear anything terrible.
"Well, he has a spot on one lung. He's very thin. . . . I think he isn't quite so ill as that doctor made out. But he'll need a lot of nursing." He thought: "What will she say when I tell her that Alayne is here?" He continued: "Everything depends on fresh air and good nursing."
Meg exclaimed: "I should be the one to nurse him! But there's Baby. I can't expose her."
He reckoned with her indolence. "What about this 'mother's help'—whatever you call her—couldn't she look after the youngster?"
Meg moved on her chair to confront him. Her short, plump arm lay across the table, her milk-white sensuously curved hand drooping over the edge. Her voice was reproachful. "Trust my baby to Minny Ware! She's a featherbrain. One never knows what she will do next! Sometimes I wish I had never seen her."
They were silent a moment. The voice of the singer came cooingly from a distant room. He could not tell Meg yet that Alayne was at Jalna.
