The shock of what she saw would have unnerved a less courageous
woman.
IT WAS A HIGHLY FINISHED PORTRAIT OF OLIVER IN HIS YOUTH, WITH A
BROAD BAND OF BLACK PAINTED DIRECTLY ACROSS THE EYES.
XVI
"DON'T! DON'T!"
In recalling this startling moment, Deborah wondered as much at
her own aplomb as at that of Judge Ostrander. Not only had she
succeeded in suppressing all recognition of what had thus been
discovered to her, but had carried her powers of self-repression
so far as to offer, and with good grace too, to assist him in
rehanging the picture. This perfection of acting had its full
reward. With equal composure he excused her from the task, and,
adding some expression of regret at his well-known carelessness in
not looking better after his effects, bowed her from the room with
only a slight increase of his usual courteous reserve.
But later, when thought came and with it a certain recollections,
what significance the incident acquired in her mind, and what a
long line of terrors it brought in its train!
It was no casual act, this defacing of a son's well-loved
features. It had a meaning--a dark and desperate meaning. Nor was
the study-wall the natural home of this picture. An unfaded square
which she had noted on the wall-paper of the inner room showed
where its original place had been. There in full view of the
broken-hearted father when he woke and in darksome watchfulness
while he slept, it had played its heavy part in his long torment--
a galling reminder of--what?
It was to answer this question--to face this new view of Oliver
and the bearing it had on the relations she had hoped to establish
between him and Reuther, that she had waited for the house to be
silent and her child asleep.
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