"I've got some lemon-cake, too," said she.

"I call this a supper fit for a queen," said Maria.

"I thought I would make the cake this afternoon. I thought maybe you would like it," said Aunt Maria, smiling. Her own pride was appeased.

The feeling that Maria, her niece whom she adored, had been slighted, had rankled within her all day. Now she told herself that Maria did not care; that she might have been foolish in not caring and taking advantage of such a matrimonial chance, but that she did not care, and that she consequently was not slighted.

"Well, I s'pose Lily told you the news this morning?" she said, presently. "I s'pose that was why she wanted to see you. I s'pose she was so tickled she couldn't wait to tell of it."

"You mean her engagement to Mr. Ramsey?" said Maria, helping herself to more stew.

"Yes. Eunice came in and told before you'd been gone half an hour.

She'd been down to the store, and I guess Lily's mother had told it to somebody there. I s'pose Adeline Merrill is tickled to death to get Lily out of the way, now she's going to get married herself. She would have had to give up her spare chamber if she hadn't."

"It seems to me a very nice arrangement," said Maria, taking a spoonful of stew. "It would have been hard for poor Lily, and now she will live with Mr. Ramsey and his mother, and Mrs. Ramsey seems to be a lovely woman."

"Yes, she is," a.s.sented Aunt Maria. "She was built on a different plan from Adeline Merrill. She came of better stock. But I don't see what George Ramsey is thinking of, for my part."

"Lily is very pretty and has a very good disposition," said Maria. "I think she will make him a good wife."

Aunt Maria sniffed. "Now, Maria Edgham," said she, "what's the use.

You know it's sour grapes he's getting. You know he wanted somebody else."

"Whom?" asked Maria, innocently, sipping her chocolate.

"You know he wanted you, Maria Edgham."

"He got over it pretty quickly then," said Maria.

"Maybe he hasn't got over it. Lily Merrill is just one of the kind of girls who lead a man on when they don't know they're being led. He is proud, too; he comes of a family that have always held their heads high. He wanted you."

"Nonsense!"

"You can't tell me. I know."

"Aunt Maria," said Maria, with sudden earnestness, "if you ever tell such a thing as that out, I don't know what I shall do."

"I ain't going to have folks think you're slighted," said Aunt Maria.

She had made up her mind, in fact, to tell Eunice after supper.

"Slighted!" said Maria, angrily. "There is no question of slight. Do you think I was in love with George Ramsey?"

"No, I don't, for if you had been you would have had him instead of letting a little dolly-pinky, rosy-like Lily Merrill get him. I think he was a good match, and I don't know what possessed you, but I don't think you wanted him."

"If you talk about it you will make people think so," said Maria, pa.s.sionately; "and if they do I will go away from Amity and never come back as long as I live."

Aunt Maria looked with sharp, gleaming eyes at her niece. "Maria Edgham, you've got something on your mind," said she.

"I have not."

"Yes, you have, and I want to know what it is."

"My mind is my own," said Maria, indignantly, even cruelly. Then she rose from the table and ran up-stairs to her own room.

"You have gone off without touching the lemon-cake," her aunt called after her, but Maria made no response.

Lemon-cake was an outpost which she could not then take. She had reached her limit, for the time being. She sat down beside her window in the dark room, lighted only by the gleam from the Merrill house across the yard and an electric light on the street corner. There were curious lights and shadows over the walls; strange flickerings and wavings as of intangible creatures, unspoken thoughts. Maria rested her elbows on the window-sill, and rested her chin in her hands, and gazed out. Presently, with a quiver of despair, she saw the door of the Merrill house open and Lily come flitting across the yard. She thought, with a shudder, that she was coming to make a few more confidences before George Ramsey arrived. She heard a timid little knock on the side door, then her aunt's harsh and uncompromising, "No, Maria ain't at home," said she, lying with the utter unrestraint of one who believes in fire and brimstone, and yet lies. She even repeated it, and emphasized and particularized her lie, seemingly with a grim enjoyment of sin, now that she had taken hold of it.

"Maria went out right after supper," said she. Then, evidently in response to Lily's low inquiry of where she had gone and when she would be home, she said: "She went to the post-office. She was expecting a letter from a gentleman in Edgham, I guess, and I shouldn't wonder if she stopped in at the Monroes' and played cards.

They've been teasing her to. I shouldn't be surprised if she wasn't home till ten o'clock."

Maria heard her aunt with wonder which savored of horror, but she heard the door close and saw Lily flit back across the yard with a feeling of immeasurable relief. Then she heard her aunt's voice at her door, opened a narrow crack.

"Are you warm enough in here?" asked Aunt Maria.

"Yes, plenty warm enough."

"You'd better not light a lamp," said Aunt Maria, coolly; "I just told that Merrill girl that you had gone out."

"But I hadn't," said Maria.

"I knew it; but there are times when a lie ain't a lie, it's only the truth upside-down. I knew that you didn't want that doll-faced thing over here again. She had better stay at home and wait for her new beau. She was all prinked up fit to kill. I told her you had gone out, and I meant to, but you'd better not light your lamp for a little while. It won't matter after a little while. I suppose the beau will come, and she won't pay any attention to it. But if you light it right away she'll think you've got back and come tearing over here again."

"All right," said Maria. "I'll sit here a little while, and then I'll light my lamp. I've got some work to do."

"I'm going into the other side, after I've finished the dishes," said Aunt Maria.

"You won't--"

"No, I won't. Let George Ramsey chew his sour grapes if he wants to.

I sha'n't say anything about it. Anybody with any sense can't help knowing a man of sense would have rather had you than Lily Merrill. I ain't afraid of anybody thinking you're slighted." There was indignant and acrid loyalty in Aunt Maria's tone. She closed the door, as was her wont, with a little slam and went down-stairs. Aunt Maria walked very heavily. Her steps jarred the house.

Maria continued sitting at her window. Presently a new light, a rosy light of a lamp under a pink shade, flashed in her eyes. The parlor in the Merrill house was lighted. Maria saw Lily draw down the curtain, upon which directly appeared the shadows of growing plants behind it in a delicate grace of tracery. Presently Maria saw a horse and sleigh drive into the Merrill yard. She saw Mrs. Merrill open the side-door, and Dr. Ellridge enter. Then she watched longer, and presently a dark shadow of a man pa.s.sed down the street, of which she could see a short stretch from her window, and she saw him go to the front door of the Merrill house. Maria knew that was George Ramsey.

She laughed a little, hysterical laugh as she sat there in the dark.

It was ridiculous, the two pairs of lovers in the two rooms! The second-hand, warmed-over, renovated love and the new. After Maria laughed she sobbed. Then she checked her sobs and sat quite still and fought, and presently a strange thing happened, which is not possible to all, but is possible to some. With an effort of the will which shocked her house of life, and her very soul, and left marks which she would bear to all eternity, she put this unlawful love for the lover of another out of her heart. She closed all her doors and windows of thought and sense upon him, and the love was gone, and in its place was an awful emptiness which yet filled her with triumph.

"I do not love him at all now," she said, quite aloud; and it was true that she did not. She rose, pulled down her curtains, lighted her lamp, and went to work.

Chapter XXVI

Maria, after that, went on her way as before. She saw, without the slightest qualm, incredible as it may seem, George Ramsey devoted to Lily. She even entered without any shrinking into Lily's plans for her trousseau, and repeatedly went shopping with her. She began embroidering a bureau-scarf and table-cover for Lily's room in the Ramsey house. It had been settled that the young couple were to have the large front chamber, and Mrs. Merrill's present to Lily was a set of furniture for it. Mrs. Ramsey's old-fashioned walnut set was stowed away. Maria even went with Mrs. Merrill to purchase the furniture. Mrs. Merrill had an idea, which could not be subdued, that Maria would have liked George Ramsey for herself, and she took a covert delight in pressing Maria into this service, and descanting upon the pleasant life in store for her daughter. Maria understood with a sort of scorn Mrs. Merrill's thought; but she said to herself that if it gave her pleasure, let her think so. She had a character which could leave people to their mean and malicious delights for very contempt.

"Well, I guess Lily's envied by a good many girls in Amity," said Mrs. Merrill, almost undisguisedly, when she and Maria had settled upon a charming set of furniture.

"I dare say," replied Maria. "Mr. Ramsey seems a very good young man."

"He's the salt of the earth," said Mrs. Merrill. She gave a glance of thwarted malice at Maria's pretty face as they were seated side by side in the trolley-car on their way home that day. Her farthest imagination could discern no traces of chagrin, and Maria looked unusually well that day in a new suit. However, she consoled herself by thinking that Maria was undoubtedly like her aunt, who would die before she let on that she was. .h.i.t, and that the girl, under her calm and smiling face, was stung with envy and slighted affection.