"Why," Mrs. Melrose stammered, with a rather feeble attempt at lightness, "have I been acting like a person with something on her mind?

It's nothing, children, nothing at all. Don't bother your dear, generous hearts about it another second!"

And she looked from one to another with a gallant smile.

Chris eyed his wife with a faint, hopeless movement of the head, and Alice correctly interpreted it to mean that the situation was worse instead of better.

"You remember the night you sent for me, some weeks ago, Aunt Marianna?"

he ventured. Mrs. Melrose moistened her lips, and swallowed with a dry throat, looking at him with a sort of alert defiance.

"I confess that I was all upset that night," she admitted, bravely. "And to tell you children the truth, Kate Sheridan coming upon me so unexpectedly----"

"Joseph quite innocently told me that evening that you had antic.i.p.ated her coming!" Christopher said, quietly, as she paused.

"Joseph was mistaken!" Mrs. Melrose said, warmly, with red colour beginning to burn in her soft, faded old face. "Kate had been a.s.sociated with a terrible time in my life," she went on, almost angrily. "And it was quite natural--or at least it seems so to me!--I don't know what other people would feel, but to _me_----But what are you two cross-examining me for?" she interrupted herself to ask, with a sudden rush of tears, as Chris looked unconvinced, and Alice still watched her sorrowfully. "Little do you know, either of you, what I have been through----"

"Mama," entreated Alice, earnestly, "will you answer me one question? I promise you that I won't ask another. You know how anxious we are only to help you, to make everything run smoothly. You know what the family is--to us. Don't you _see_ we are?" Alice asked suddenly, seeing that the desire for sympathy and advice was rapidly breaking up the ice that had chilled her mother's heart for long weeks. "Won't you tell me just this--it's about Annie, Mama. When she was so ill in Munich. Was--was her little baby born there?"

"Yes!" Mrs. Melrose whispered, with fascinated eyes fixed on her daughter's face.

Alice, ashen faced, fell back against her pillows without speaking.

"Kate Sheridan brought the child home," Christopher stated, rather than asked, very quietly. His mother-in-law looked at him apathetically.

"Kate--yes!"

"Does Annie know it, Mama?" Alice whispered, after a silence.

"Annie? Oh, my G.o.d, no!" The mother's voice rose almost to a wail. "Oh, Chris--Alice--if you love me, Annie must not know! So proud, so happy; and she would never bear it! I know her--I know her! She would kill herself before----"

"Darling, you must be quiet!" Alice said, commandingly. "No one shall know it. What we do for this child shall be done for--well, our cousin.

Chris will help you manage everything, and no one shall ever suspect it from me. It will all work out right, you'll see. Other people aren't watching us, as we always think they are; it's n.o.body's business if a cousin of ours suddenly appears in the family. No one would dare whisper one word against the Melroses. Only be quiet, Mama darling, and don't worry. Now that we know it, we will never, never allude to it again, will we, Chris? You can trust us."

Mrs. Melrose had sunk back into her chair; her face was putty-coloured, beads of water stood on her forehead.

"Oh, the relief--the relief!" she kept whispering, as she clung to Alice's hand. "Alice, for the sake of the name--dear--for all our sakes!----"

"Now, if you two girls will take my advice!" Christopher suggested, cheerfully, "you'll stop talking about all this, and let it wait until to-morrow. Then we'll consult, and see just what proposition we can make to little Miss Sheridan, and what's best to be done. Alice, why don't you go over that wedding list of Leslie's with your mother? And ring for dinner. I'm going to dress."

"We will!" Alice agreed, sensibly. "As a family we've always faced things courageously. We're fighters--we Melroses--and we'll stand together!"

CHAPTER IX

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 Ma.s.s, 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!"

CHAPTER X

So it came about quite naturally that the little unknown cousin of the Melroses was made a familiar figure in their different family groups, and friends of the house grew accustomed to finding pretty little Norma Sheridan lunching with Leslie, reading beside Alice's couch in the late summer afternoons, or amusing and delighting the old head of the family in a hundred charming ways. Norma called Mrs. Melrose "Aunt Marianna"

now, as Chris and Acton did. She did not understand the miracle, it remained a marvel still, but it was enough that it continued to deepen and spread with every enchanted hour.

She had longed--what girl in Biretta's Bookstore did not?--to be rich, and to move and have her being "in society." And now she had her wish, a hundred times fulfilled, and of course she was utterly and absolutely happy.

That is, except for the momentary embarra.s.sments and jealousies and uncertainties, and for sometimes being bored, she thought that she might consider herself happy. And there were crumpled rose-leaves everywhere!

she reminded herself sternly. She--Norma Sheridan--could spend more money upon the single item of shoes, for example, than Miss Smith, head of Biretta's Bookshop, could earn in a whole long year of hot months and cold, of weary days and headachy days.

That part of it was "fun", she admitted to herself. The clothes were fun, the boxes and boxes and boxes that came home for her, the petticoats and stockings, the nightgowns heavy with filet lace, and the rough boots for tramping and driving, and the silk and satin slippers for the house. Nothing disappointing there! Norma never would forget the ecstasies of those first shopping trips with Aunt Marianna. Did she want them?--the beaded bag, the woolly scarf, the little saucy hat, were all to be sent to Miss Sheridan, please. Norma lost her breath, and laughed, and caught it again and lost it afresh. They had so quickly dropped the little pretence that she was to make herself useful, these wonderful and generous Melroses; they had so soon forgotten everything except that she was Leslie's age, and to be petted and spoiled as if she had been another Leslie!

And now, after more than half a year, she knew that they liked her; that all of them liked her in their varying degrees. Old Mrs. Melrose and Alice--Mrs. Christopher Liggett--were most warmly her champions, perhaps, but Leslie was too unformed a character to be definitely hostile, and the little earlier jealousies and misunderstandings were blown away long ago, and even the awe-inspiring Annie had shown a real friendliness of late. Acton Liggett and Hendrick von Behrens were always kind and admiring, and Norma had swiftly captivated Annie's little boys.

But of them all, she still liked Chris Liggett the best, and felt nearest Chris even when he scolded her, or hurt her feelings with his frank advice. And she knew that Chris thoroughly liked her, in spite of the mistakes that she was continually making, and the absurd ways in which her ignorance and strangeness still occasionally betrayed her.

It had been a time full of mistakes, of course. Chris often told her that she had more brains in her little finger than most of the girls of her set had in their whole bodies, but that had not saved her. If she was pretty, they were all pretty, too. If she wore beautiful clothes, they wore clothes just as beautiful, and with more a.s.surance. If her wit was quick, and her common sense and human experience far greater than theirs, these were just the qualities they neither needed nor trusted.

They spoke their own language, the language of youthful arrogance and ignorance, the language of mutual compliments and small personalities, and Norma could not speak this tongue any more than she could join them when they broke easily into French or German or Italian. She could ride, because she was not afraid of the mild-mannered cobs that were used at the riding school and in the park, but she knew little of correct posture and proper handling of reins. She could swim, as Wolf had taught her, in the old river years ago, but she knew nothing of the terms and affectations of properly taught swimming. When she went to see Aunt Kate, she was almost ashamed of the splendour of her clothing and the utter luxury of the life she led, but with Leslie and her friends she often felt herself what perhaps they thought her, an insignificant little poor relation of the Melroses, who had appeared from n.o.body knew where, and might return unchallenged at any moment to her original obscurity.

This phase of the new life was disappointing, and Norma realized herself that she spent a quite disproportionate amount of time in thinking about it. Wasn't it enough, she would ask herself impatiently, to be one of them at all, to see one's picture in the fashionable weeklies, as a member of the family, at the Liggett-Melrose wedding; to have clothes and motor-cars, and a bedroom that was like a picture; to know Newport at first-hand; to have cruised for a week in the Craigies' yacht, and have driven to Quebec and back in the Von Behrens' car? A year ago, she reminded herself, it would have seemed Paradise to have had even a week's freedom from the bookshop; now, she need never step into Biretta's again!

But it was not enough, and Norma would come impatiently to the end of her pondering with the same fretted sense of dissatisfaction. It was not enough to be tremulously praised by old Aunt Marianna, to be joked by Chris, greeted by Alice, his wife, with a friendly smile. Norma wanted to belong to this life, to be admired and sought by Leslie, rather than endured; to have the same easy familiarity with Duers, and Alexanders, and Rutgers that Leslie had.

As was quite natural, she and Leslie had eyed each other, from the very beginning, somewhat as rivals. But Leslie, even then preparing for her marriage, had so obviously held all the advantages, that her vague resentment and curiosity concerning the family's treatment of the unknown newcomer were brief. If Aunt Alice liked Norma to come in and talk books and write notes, if Chris chose to be gallant, if Grandma lavished an unusual affection upon this new protegee, well, it robbed Leslie of nothing, after all.