In "The Open Window" by Saki, why does Mr. Framton Nuttel look at the niece in a sympathetic manner when Mrs.Sappleton says that her husband and...

Before Mrs. Sappleton arrived to greet the visitor, Vera had prepared Framton Nuttle to believe that her aunt was insane.

"Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back someday, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do....Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window - "

Naturally her aunt expects the three hunters to come back, since they have only been gone for their day's shooting. But Nuttle believes they have been gone for three full years and that Mrs. Sappleton lost her mind three years ago as a result of that tragic occurrence. He turns to give Vera a look of understanding and compassion because he is sure that her aunt must be having another hallucination when she appears to be seeing all three men returning for tea. Evidently she has been imagining them returning every evening for these three years and then imagining them all having their tea together.

"Here they are at last!" she cried. "Just in time for tea, and don't they look as if they were muddy up to the eyes!"

What really frightens Nuttle is not what he considers to be Mrs. Sappleton's hallucination, since he takes it for granted that the woman is crazy, but the look he sees on Vera's face when he turns towards her.

The child was staring out through the open window with a dazed horror in her eyes.

We can imagine the open-mouthed, goggle-eyed imitation of dazed horror on a teenaged girl's face which had previously shown nothing but "self-possession." Nuttle can't see what Vera is looking at. He swings around and sees the humdrum sight of three men returning from hunting--but he assumes that they are living dead men who have climbed out of the bog after being buried there for three years and are finally returning home all covered with mud and dead leaves.

Nuttle has come to this quiet English countryside for rest. He is visiting the Sappletons hoping for a little tea and sympathy but has somehow stumbled into a real nut house--and he wants to get out of there as quickly as possible. The fact that he believes the three approaching figures are ghosts is bad enough, but these are three "ghosts" carrying guns!