Molly did not have any “larks” the next day, for she was so stiff
and sore she had to remain in bed all day, and submit to the fussy
attendance of Ginny Ann, and the kindness of her remorseful aunt who,
blaming herself for the girl’s accident, did all in her power to atone
for it, even to promising her a month at the White Sulphur Springs,
and freely pardoning her for sending her money to Molly Trueheart, the
actress’ daughter.
“And I sent Agnes Walker back to town yesterday and bought two new
dresses for you,” she said. “And I’ve trunks full of things as good as
new that she’s going to make over for you to wear.”
“Oh, Aunt Thalia, I don’t deserve ’em, I can’t take ’em,” Molly
said, conscience-stricken at all this kindness. She said to herself
reproachfully, “And I wrote to Lou that she was an old dragoness! What
a shame! She has turned real good, and it makes me feel meaner than
ever. Oh, I can’t take her presents and go to the Springs with her, and
I mustn’t say a word, I must wait for Lou’s letter. She will certainly
let me come home at once!”
But several days passed and no reply came from the absent step-sister.
Meanwhile the work of dress-making went briskly on, to the secret
distress of the little fraud, as she called herself when alone.
“Oh, it’s too bad, ruining all these fine things cutting them up for
me! I shall never wear them, and they will not do for Louise, she is
so much bigger than I am! Oh, why don’t she write and put a stop to
it all?” she thought impatiently, and in her trouble she wrote another
letter, telling Louise of the sacrifice of the finery, and begging her
incoherently to “do something.”
By the time that she could reasonably expect a reply to this second
appeal several very pretty dresses were completed, and one evening soon
after tea when she had hurried upstairs to have a real good cry over
Louise’s unaccountable silence, she was startled by the abrupt entrance
of Mrs. Barry’s maid with the muslin dress thrown over her arm.
“Mrs. Barry wants you to dress and come down to the parlor,” she said.
Molly stared.
“What for?” she inquired ungrammatically.
Agnes Walker shook her head laconically and answered:
“I can’t tell. She wants to see how your new dresses fit, perhaps, or
to give you some lessons in managing your train. Anyway, she told me to
dress you and send you down.”
“Here’s a lark,” said the merry girl to herself, forgetting all about
her tears of a minute before.
She submitted coolly to Agnes Walker’s help, exclaiming gayly:
“I should like to see how I look in a fine dress. I never had one in my
life.”
“Fy, Miss Barry,” cried the maid; but Molly persisted in her assertion.
“Well, it’s very becoming to you, anyway,” said Agnes, carefully
adjusting the graceful demi-train with its embroidered flounces.
She had tied Mollie’s refractory dark curls back from her peach-bloom
cheeks with a new rose-pink ribbon, and fastened a bunch of pink roses
in with the lace of her square corsage. The round dimpled arms, bare to
the elbows, were faultless in shape and contour as they escaped from
their soft ruffles.
“You look very nice,” continued Agnes, critically.
“Thank you; but I feel like a peacock,” said the girl, with such
ludicrous strut across the floor that the maid burst out laughing.
“Miss Barry, you haven’t got a bit of dignity. You’re just like a
child!” she exclaimed. “But go, now, to your aunt. You know how
impatient she is.”
Molly laughed; but she went along the hall quite sedately and down the
stairs, pausing only once to take a gratified peep at herself in the
mirror of the tall hatrack opposite the parlor door.
“I do look _nice_,” she said, nodding at the radiant reflection, and a
sudden thought came to her. She muttered:
“I wish _he_ could see me now, the hateful _prig_! I know I _did_ look
like a tramp that night.”
With that she crossed the hall, turned the handle of the parlor door
and entered.
A blaze of light greeted her and made her pause in surprise. The big
chandeliers in the double parlors were both lighted and Mrs. Barry was
entertaining a guest.
She rose with suave dignity.
“Cecil, this is my niece, Louise--Miss Barry, Mr. Laurens.”
Taken by surprise, Molly made a bashful constrained little courtesy
without looking up, but as she was about to sink into a seat by her
aunt a manly hand grasped hers and a familiar voice said kindly:
“I am glad to meet you, Miss Barry. I hope we shall be as good friends
as the Barrys and Laurens have been before us!”
Molly looked at him with dilated eyes. It was the stranger she had met
a few nights before!
Her lips parted and closed again without a sound. In pitiable agitation
she dropped into a large arm-chair behind Mrs. Barry, telling herself
that he had betrayed the whole escapade, and that now the old lady’s
wrath would be poured out upon her head in fullest measure. She waited
in sheer desperation for the blow to fall on her pretty luckless head.
Not a word was addressed to her by either her aunt or the visitor.
Mrs. Barry took up the thread of a momentarily dropped discourse about
London. They discussed that famous city at some length while the
culprit trembled in her chair.
Then Mrs. Barry’s gray silk rustled as she rose from her sofa.
“Cecil, you will kindly excuse me for ten minutes,” she said, suavely;
and, like a wise old lady, left them alone to get acquainted with each
other.
Molly drew a long, deep breath that was almost a sob, and looked up,
thinking that she had escaped a threatening danger.
She thought, happily:
“He does not recognize me!”
But she was mistaken. Cecil Laurens was looking at her with a quizzical
smile.
He drew his chair nearer--beside her, in fact--and said, reproachfully:
“You said your name was Molly Trueheart--”
“Oh, hush!” cried Molly.
She almost jumped out of her seat in her terror lest Mrs. Barry should
have heard his words.
“I----I--told you--a--a story, Mr. Laurens,” she said, tremulously.
“But please, _please_ don’t tell Aunt Thalia!”
The violet eyes under the dark brows and high, white forehead regarded
the pleading face rather sternly.
He said:
“Then your aunt did not know of your--your--” hesitating, then half
smiling, “your ‘lark’ that night?”
Molly grew hot and angry under that peculiar smile.
“I don’t see what you’re smiling at,” she said, crossly. “No, she
doesn’t know; and--if--you--are--a gentleman--you will not betray me!”
He flushed as the slow, emphatically uttered words fell from the girl’s
lips, and answered, curtly:
“I claim to be a gentleman, Miss Barry, but I can not comprehend the
motives of a _lady_ who goes on such a madcap race by night unknown to
her guardians, and under a fictitious name!”
The sarcasm in his voice stung deeply. Molly turned crimson and
exclaimed, resentfully:
“It is _not_ a fictitious name--it is my own--my step-sister’s name,
and I have a right to use it if I choose!”
Cecil Laurens queried, gravely:
“Do you think your step-sister would be willing to allow such an
escapade to go under her name?”
Tears of shame and anger flashed into Molly’s dark eyes.
“Molly Trueheart would not care--not a bit!” she declared, with a
half sob. “And--and it’s none of your business, any way, Mr. Cecil
Laurens, and I think you’re old enough to know better than to meddle
with--anybody--like this. I would have told you all about it if you
hadn’t been so smart, but now I won’t, so there! And you may go and
tell Aunt Thalia all you know, if you’re mean enough, and of course you
_are_!”
With that she bounced out of her chair and flew to the bay-window,
where she stood with her back to him, her cheeks hot with anger, and
her eyes so dim with tears that she could not see how brightly the
stars were sparkling in the sky.
Cecil Laurens remained perfectly silent, and there was a glitter of
anger in his violet eyes.
“What a little fury!” he was thinking. “I have always heard that the
Barrys were high-spirited, but I never had an exhibition of their
temper before. Pity to spoil such a pretty face flying into such a
rage.”
Mrs. Barry’s ten minutes passed without bringing her back, and Mr.
Laurens grew tired of watching Molly’s obdurate back. He opened the
grand organ and sat down before it, pressing his fingers softly on the
keys.
Music was his one passion, and he had devoted years to its study.
He played now a low _andante_ movement, full of grace and sweetness
and tenderness that soothed his own perturbed spirit, and made him
momentarily forget the audacious girl who had disturbed him. Gliding
from one melody into another, he paused, at last, with a sudden
remembrance, and, turning his head, saw Molly close beside him.
The music had drawn her against her will by a strange, magnetic power.
All the anger had died from her face and eyes, leaving a dreamy
softness in its place.
“So I have soothed your savage spirit?” he exclaimed, with a smile, and
Molly started and blushed.
“I--I--am fond of music,” she stammered.
“Perhaps you will play for me now?” he said, rising.
“Oh, no!” starting back, and just then Mrs. Barry came in.
“I have been playing to your little girl,” Cecil Laurens said to her,
with a smile.
“She may look like a little girl, but she is a grown-up young lady,
Cecil,” Mrs. Barry answered, quickly, and Molly cried out, vexedly:
“I am not! I won’t be seventeen till August.”
Mrs. Barry glared at her displeasedly.
“Only hear her, Cecil! pretending to be a school-girl still! I never
_could_ understand why girls try to make themselves out younger than
they really are. I am sure there is not such a charm in callow youth as
they think,” she said, tartly.
Molly was already biting her lips in dismay.
“Aunt Thalia, I was jesting,” she said, soberly, without glancing at
Cecil Laurens.
She was asking herself if he would betray her to her aunt, if he
would accuse her then and there of that “lark” which she shuddered
to remember now; but apparently he meant to put it off to some more
convenient season, for presently he said good-night and went away
without alluding to the subject. Molly drew a sigh of relief as he
left, but his blue eyes and his wondrous music haunted her perturbed
dreams that night.