With them the trouble continued, for Ethelyn kept her bed next day,
refusing to see anyone and only answering Richard in monosyllables when
he addressed himself directly to her. Once he bent over her and said,
"Ethelyn, tell me truly--is it your desire to be with me, your dread of
separation from me, which makes you so averse to be left behind?"
There was that in his voice which said that if this were the case he
might be induced to reconsider. But though sorely tempted to do it,
Ethelyn would not tell a falsehood for the sake of Washington; so she
made no reply, and Richard drew from her silence any inference he
pleased. He was very wretched those last days, for he could not forget
the look of Ethelyn's eye or the sound of her voice when, as she finally
gave up the contest, she said to him with quivering nostrils and steady
tones, "You may leave me here, Richard, but remember this: not one word
or line will I write to you while you are gone. I mean what I say. I
shall abide by my decision."
It would be dreadful not to hear a word from Ethie during all the dreary
winter, and Richard hoped she would recall her words; but Ethelyn was
too sorely wounded to do that. She must reach Richard somehow, and this
was the way to do it. She did not come downstairs again after it was
settled. She was sick, she said, and kept her room, seeing no one but
Richard and Eunice, who three times a day brought up her nicely cooked
meals and looked curiously at her as she deposited her tray upon the
stand and quietly left the room. Mrs. Markham did not go up at all, for
Ethelyn charged her disappointment directly to her mother-in-law, and
had asked that she be kept away; and so, 'mid passion and tears and
bitterness, the week went by and brought the day when Richard was
to leave.