As yet neither Marcia nor David had touched upon the subjects which had troubled them. They did not realize it, but they were so suddenly happy in each other's company they had forgotten for the moment. The pleasant converse was broken up at once. Marcia's face hardened into something like alarm as she saw who stood in the doorway.
"Why, David, have you got home at last?" said Hannah. "I did not know it." That was an untruth. She had watched him from behind Grandmother Heath's rose bush. "Where did you come from last? New York? Oh, then you saw Mrs. Leavenworth. How is she? I fell in love with her when I was there."
Now David had never fully taken in Kate's married name. He knew it of course, but in his present state of happiness at getting home, and his absorption in the work he had been doing, the name "Mrs. Leavenworth" conveyed nothing whatever to David's mind. He looked blankly at Hannah and replied indifferently enough with a cool air. "No, Miss Hannah, I had no time for social life. I was busy every minute I was away."
David never expected Hannah to say anything worth listening to, and he was so full of his subject that he had not noticed that she made no reply.
Hannah watched him curiously as he talked, his remarks after all were directed more to Marcia than to her, and when he paused she said with a contemptuous sneer in her voice, "I never could understand, David, how you who seem to have so much sense in other things will take up with such fanciful, impractical dreams as this railroad. Lemuel says it'll never run."
Hannah quoted her lover with a proud bridling of her head as if the matter were settled once and for all. It was the first time she had allowed the world to see that she acknowledged her relation to Lemuel. She was not averse to having David understand that she felt there were other men in the world besides himself. But David turned merry eyes on her.
"Lemuel says?" he repeated, and he made a sudden movement with his arm which sent a knife and spoon from the table in a clatter upon the floor.
"And how much does Lemuel know about the matter?"
"Lemuel has good practical common sense," said Hannah, vexed, "and he knows what is possible and what is not. He does not need to travel all over the country on a wild goose chase to learn that."