Henry obeyed.  Sylvia fastened his necktie for him when he was ready for it.  He wondered if she smelled the leather in his drenched clothing.  His own nostrils were full of it.  But Sylvia made no sign.  She never afterwards made any sign.  She never intimated to Henry in any fashion that she knew of his return to the shop.  She was, if anything, kinder and gentler with him than she had been before, but whenever he attempted, being led thereto by a guilty conscience, to undeceive her, Sylvia lightly but decidedly waved the revelation aside.  She would not have it.

That day, when she and Henry entered the sitting-room, she said, so calmly that he had not the courage to contradict her:  “Here is your uncle Henry home from Mr. Meeks’s, and he was as wet as a drowned rat.  I suppose Mr. Meeks didn’t have any umbrella to lend.  Old bachelors never do have anything.”

Henry sat down quietly in his allotted chair.  He said nothing.  It was only when the storm had abated, when there was a clear streak of gold low in the west, and all the wet leaves in the yard gave out green and silver lights, when Sylvia had gone out in the kitchen to get supper and Rose had followed her, that the two men looked at each other.

“Does she know?” whispered Horace.

“If she does know, and has taken a notion never to let anybody know she knows, she never will,” replied Henry.

“You mean that she will never mention it even to you?”

Henry nodded.  He looked relieved and scared.  He was right.  He continued to work in the shop, and Sylvia never intimated to him that she knew anything about it.

Chapter XVII

When Henry had worked in the shop before Sylvia’s inheritance, he had always given her a certain proportion of his wages and himself defrayed their housekeeping bills.  He began to do so again, and Sylvia accepted everything without comment.  Henry gradually became sure that she did not touch a dollar of her income from her new property for herself.  One day he found on the bureau in their bedroom a book on an Alford savings-bank, and discovered that Sylvia had opened an account therein for Rose.  Sylvia also began to give Rose expensive gifts.  When the girl remonstrated, she seemed so distressed that there was nothing to do but accept them.

Sylvia no longer used any of Abrahama White’s clothes for herself.  Instead, she begged Rose to take them, and finally induced her to send several old gowns to her dressmaker in New York for renovation.  When Rose appeared in these gowns Sylvia’s expression of worried secrecy almost vanished.

The time went on, and it was midsummer.  Horace was spending his long vacation in East Westland.  He had never done so before, and Sylvia was not pleased by it.  Day after day she told him that he did not look well, that she thought he needed a change of air.  Henry became puzzled.  One day he asked Sylvia if she did not want Mr. Allen to stay with them any longer.