This was on Friday, and it was on the following Monday that Wolf and
Rose Sheridan came home to find news awaiting them. The day before had
been surprisingly sunny and sweet, and Wolf and Harry Redding had taken
the girls to Newark, where Wolf's motor-car had been stored all winter,
and they had laughed, and joked, and chattered all the way like the
care-free young things they were. Mrs. Sheridan, urged to join them, had
pleaded business: she had promised old Mrs. Melrose to go and see her.
So she had left them at the church door, after Mass, and they had gone
their way rejoicing in sunshine and warm breezes, a part of the
streaming holiday crowds that were surging and idling along the drying
pavements.
Wolf was neither of an age nor type for piety, but to-day he had prayed
that this little Norma kneeling beside him, with the youth and fire and
audacity shining in her face even while she prayed, might turn that same
mysterious and solemn smile upon him again some day, as his wife. And
all day long, as she danced along by his side, as she eagerly debated
the question of luncheon, as she enslaved the aged coloured man in the
garage, the new thrill of which he had only recently become so
pleasantly conscious, stirred in his heart, and whatever she touched, or
said, or looked, was beautified almost beyond recognition.
He had thought, coming home Monday night, that he and she would take a
little walk, in the lingering dusk of the cool spring evening, and
perhaps see the twelfth installment of "The Stripe-Faced Terror," which
was playing in the near-by moving-picture house.
But he found her in a new mood, almost awed with an unexpected ecstasy
in which he had no part--would never have a part. She and Aunt Kate had
been to see Mrs. Melrose again.
"And, Wolf, what do you think! They want me to go live there--with the
Liggetts, to help with lists and things for Leslie's wedding. Mrs.
Melrose kissed me, Wolf, and said--didn't she, Aunt Kate?--that I must
try to feel that I belong to them; and she was so sweet--she put her arm
about me, and said that I must have some pretty clothes! And the car is
coming for me on Wednesday; isn't it like a dream? Oh, Rose, if I'm
thankful enough! And I'm to come back here for dinner once a week, and
of course you and Rose are to come there! Oh, Rose, but I wish it was us
both--I wish it was you, you're so good!"
"I wouldn't have it, Norma," Rose said, in her honest, pleasant voice.
"You know I'd feel like a fool."
"Oh, but I am so happy!" And Norma, who had gotten into Aunt Kate's lap,
as the marvellous narrative progressed, dug her face into Aunt Kate's
motherly soft shoulder, and tightened her arms about her neck, and cried
a little, for sheer joy.
But Wolf said almost nothing, and when he went to wash his hands for
supper he went slowly, and found himself staring absently at the towel,
and stopping short in the hall, still staring. He seemed himself at
dinner, and his mother, at first watching him anxiously, could resume
her meal, and later, could fall asleep, in the confident hope that it
would all come right, after all. But Wolf slipped from the house after
awhile, and walked the streets until almost dawn.
It was almost dawn, too when the old mistress of the Melrose mansion
fell asleep. She had called Regina more than once, she had tried the
effect of reading, and of hot milk, and of a cold foot-bath. But still
the crowded, over-furnished room was filled with ghosts, and still she
watched them, pleaded with them, blamed them.
"I've done all I could!" she whispered at last, into the heavy dark
before the dawn. "It isn't my fault if they think she's Annie's child!
I've never said so--it was Alice and Chris who said so. Annie and Leslie
will never know anything more, and the girl herself need never know
anything at all. Perhaps, as Kate said yesterday, it will all work out
right, this way! At least it's all we can do now!"