Might not that circumstance after all saddle me with a guardianship?
If this idea did not make me more uncomfortable as I walked up
and down it was because I was convinced I had nothing to look to.
If the old woman had not destroyed everything before she pounced
upon me in the parlor she had done so afterward.
It took Miss Tita rather longer than I had expected to guess that I was there;
but when at last she came out she looked at me without surprise.
I said to her that I had been waiting for her, and she asked why I had not let
her know. I was glad the next day that I had checked myself before remarking
that I had wished to see if a friendly intuition would not tell her:
it became a satisfaction to me that I had not indulged in that rather
tender joke. What I did say was virtually the truth--that I was too nervous,
since I expected her now to settle my fate.
"Your fate?" said Miss Tita, giving me a queer look;
and as she spoke I noticed a rare change in her.
She was different from what she had been the evening before--
less natural, less quiet. She had been crying the day before and
she was not crying now, and yet she struck me as less confident.
It was as if something had happened to her during the night,
or at least as if she had thought of something that troubled her--
something in particular that affected her relations
with me, made them more embarrassing and complicated.
Had she simply perceived that her aunt's not being there now
altered my position?
"I mean about our papers.
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