"Miss Sheridan, I really could not do it, Miss! If it was a telegram, or something of that sort----But if anything was to happen to you, Miss, it would be--it really would be most unfortunate!"

Norma had stood still, choking. And in the starlight he had seen the glitter of tears in her eyes.

"Couldn't you put it to Mrs. Craigie, Miss? I'm sure she'd send someone--one of the maids----"

But Norma shook her head. It would anger Caroline, and perhaps Caroline's mother, and Annie, too, to have her upset the cruise by her own foolish plans. There was no hope of her hostess's consent.

What!--send a girl of eighteen down to New York for dear knows what fanciful purpose, without a hint from parent or guardian? Mrs. Craigie knew the modern girl far too well for that, even if it had not been personally extremely inconvenient to herself to spare a maid. They were rather short of maids, for two or three of them had been quite ill.

The launch had put off, with Captain Burns in the stern. Norma had stood watching it, with her heart of lead. Oh, to be running away--flying--on the train--in the familiar streets! They could forgive her later--or never----

"Norma, aren't you naughty?" Caroline had interrupted her thoughts, and had slipped a hand through her arm. "Buoso is going to sing--do come in!

My dear, you know that last hand? Well, we made it----!"

The next two days were the slowest, the hardest, the bitterest of Norma's life. She felt that n.o.body had ever had to bear so aching a heart as hers, as the most beautiful yacht in the world skimmed over the blue ocean, and the sun shone down on her embroidered linen suit, and her white shoes, and the pearl ring that Caroline had given her for her birthday.

What were they doing at Aunt Kate's? What were they saying as the hours went by? At what stage was the cake--and the gown? Was Rose really to be married to-morrow--to-day?

In New Brunswick she had managed to send a long wire, full of the disappointment and affection and longing she truly felt, and after that she had been happier. But it was a very subdued little Norma who had come quietly into Aunt Kate's kitchen three weeks later, and had relieved her over-charged heart with a burst of tears on Aunt Kate's shoulder.

Aunt Kate had been kind, kind as she always was to the adored foster-child. And Norma had stayed to dinner, and made soft and penitent eyes at Wolf until the agonized resolutions of the past lonely months had all melted out of his heart again, and they had all gone over to Rose's, for five minutes of kissing and crying, before the big car came to carry Norma away.

So the worst of that wound was healed, and life could become bright and promising to Norma once more. Autumn was an invigorating season, anyway, full of hope and enchantment, and Caroline Craigie, by what Norma felt to be a special providence, was visiting her grandmother in Baltimore for an indefinite term. The truth was that there was a doctor there whose advice was deemed valuable to Caroline, but Norma did not know that. Norma did not know the truth, either, about Mrs. von Behrens's sudden graciousness toward her, but it made her happy. Annie had become friendly and hospitable toward the newcomer in the family for only one reason. As a social dictator, she was accustomed to be courted and followed by scores of women who desired her friendship for the prestige it gave them. Annie was extremely autocratic in this respect, and could snub, chill, and ignore even the most hopeful aspirants to her favour, with the ease of long practice. It made no difference to Annie that dazzling credentials were produced, or that past obscurity was more than obliterated by present glory.

"One truly must be firm," Annie frequently said. "It devolves upon a few of us, as an actual duty, to see that society is maintained in its true spirit. Let the bars down once----!"

Norma, a negligible factor in Annie's life when she first appeared, had quite innocently become a problem during that first summer. While not a Melrose, she was a member of the Melrose family, making her home with one of the daughters of the house. Annie might ignore Norma, but there were plenty of women, and men, too, who saw in the girl a valuable social lever. To become intimate with little Miss Sheridan meant that one might go up to her, at teas and dinners, while she was with Mrs.

Melrose, or young Mrs. Liggett, or even Mrs. von Behrens herself, in a casual, friendly manner that indicated, to a watching world, a comfortable footing with the family. Norma was consequently selected for social attention.

Annie saw this immediately, and when all the families were settled in town again, she decided to take Norma's social training in hand, as she had done Leslie's, and make sure that no undesirable c.o.c.kle was sown among the family fields. She would have done exactly the same if Norma had been the least attractive of girls, but Norma fancied that her own qualities had won Annie's reluctant friendship, and was accordingly pleased.

CHAPTER XII

Eight months later, in the clear sunshine of a late autumn morning, a slender young woman came down the steps of the Melrose house, after an hour's call on the old mistress, and turned briskly toward Fifth Avenue.

In figure, in carriage, and even in the expression of her charming and animated face, she was different from the girl who had come to that same house to make a call with Aunt Kate, on the day after the big blizzard, yet it was the same Norma Sheridan who nodded a refusal to the driver of the big motor-car that was waiting, and set off by herself for her walk.

The old Norma, straight from Biretta's Bookshop, had been pretty in plain serge and shabby fur. But this Norma--over whose soft thick belted coat a beautiful silver-fox skin was linked, whose heavy, ribbed silk hose disappeared into slim, flat, shining pumps that almost caressed the slender foot, whose dark hair had the l.u.s.tre that comes from intelligent care, and whose handsome little English hat was the only one of its special cut in the world--was a conspicuously attractive figure even in a world of well-groomed girls, and almost deserved to be catalogued as a beauty. From the hat to the shoes she was palpably correct, and Norma knew, and never could quite sufficiently revel in the knowing, that the blouse and the tailored skirt that were under the coat were correct, too, and that under blouse and skirt were cobwebby linens and perfumed ribbons and sheerest silks that were equally perfect in their way.

Leslie's bulldog, pulling on his strap, kept her moving rapidly, and girl and dog exacted from almost all the pa.s.sers-by that tribute of glances to which Norma was now beginning to be accustomed.

She was walking to Mrs. von Behrens's after an unusually harmonious luncheon with old Mrs. Melrose. This was one of Norma's happy times, and she almost danced in the crisp November air that promised snow even now.

Leslie had asked her to come informally to tea; Annie had sent a message that she wished to see Norma; and Alice, who, like all invalids, had dark moods of which only her own household was aware, had been her nicest self for a week. Then Christopher was coming home to-night, and Norma had missed him for the three weeks he had been away, duck-shooting in the South, and liked the thought that he was homeward bound.

She found Leslie with Annie to-day, in Annie's big front bedroom. Leslie was in a big chair by the bed where Annie, with some chalky preparation pasted in strips on those portions of her face that were most inclined to wrinkle, was lying flat. Her hair, rubbed with oils and packed in tight bands, was entirely invisible, and over her arms, protruding from a gorgeous oriental wrap, loose chamois gloves were drawn. Annie had been to a luncheon, and was to appear at two teas, a dinner, and the theatre, and she was making the most of an interval at home. She looked indescribably hideous, as she stretched a friendly hand toward Norma, and nodded toward a chair.

"Look at the child's colour--Heavens! what it is to be young," said Annie. "Sit down, Norma. How's Alice?"

"Lovely!" Norma said, pulling off her gloves. "She had a wire from Chris, and he gets back to-night. I had luncheon with your mother, and I am to go to stay with her for two or three nights, anyway. But Aunt Alice said that she would like to have me back again next week for her two teas."

"How old are you, Norma?" Annie asked, suddenly. Any sign of interest on her part always thrilled the girl, who answered, flushing:

"Nineteen; twenty in January, Aunt Annie."

"I'm thinking, if you'd like it, of giving you a little tea here next month," Annie said, lazily. "You know quite enough of the youngsters now to have a thoroughly nice time, and afterward we'll have a dinner here, and they can dance!"

"Oh, Aunt Annie--if I'd like it!" Norma exclaimed, rosy with pleasure.

"You would?" Annie asked, looking at a hand from which she had drawn the glove, and smiling slightly. "It means that you don't go anywhere in the meantime. You're not out until then, you know!"

"Oh, but I won't be going anywhere, anyway," Norma conceded, contentedly.

"You'll have a flood of invitations fast enough after the tea," Annie a.s.sured her, pleased at her excitement, "and until then, you can simply say that you are not going out yet."

"Chris said he might take me to the opera on the first night; I've never been," Norma said, timidly. "But I can explain to him!"

"Oh, that won't count!" Annie a.s.sured her, carelessly. "We'll all be there, of course! Have you worn the corn-coloured gown yet?"

"Oh, no, Aunt Annie!"

"Well, keep it for that night. And you and Chris might----No, he'll want to dine with Alice, and she'll want to see you in your new gown. I was going to say that you might dine here, but you'd better not."

"I think Leslie and Acton are going to be asked to dine with us," Norma said. "Aunt Alice said something about it!"

"Well," Annie agreed indifferently. "Ring that bell, Norma--I've got to get up! Where are you girls going now?"

"Some of the girls are coming to my house for tea," Leslie answered, listlessly. "I've got the car here. Come on, Norma!"

"But you're not driving, Kiddie?" her aunt asked, quickly.

Leslie, who neither looked nor felt well, raised half-resentful eyes.

"Oh, no, I'm not driving, and I'm lying in bed mornings, and I don't play squash, or ride horseback, or go in for tennis!" she drawled, half angrily. "I'm having a perfectly _lovely_ time! I wish Acton had a little of it; he wouldn't be so pleased! Makes me so mad," grumbled Leslie, as she wandered toward the door, busily b.u.t.toning her coat.

"Grandma crying with joy, and Aunt Alice goo-gooing at me, and Acton----"

"Come, now, be a little sport, Leslie!" her aunt urged, affectionately, with her arm about her. "It's rotten, of course, but after all, it does mean a lot to the Liggetts----"

"Oh, now, don't _you_ begin!" Leslie protested, half-mollified, with her parting nod. "Don't--for pity's sake!--talk about it," she added, rudely, to Norma, as Norma began some consolatory murmur on the stairs.

But when they were before her own fire, waiting for the expected girls, she made Norma a rather ungracious confidence.

"I don't want Aunt Alice or any one to know it, but if Acton Liggett thinks I am going to let him make an absolute fool of me, he's mistaken!" Leslie said, in a sort of smouldering resentment.

"What has Acton done?" Norma asked, flattered by the intimation of trust and not inclined to be apprehensive. She had seen earlier differences between the young married pair, and now, when Leslie was physically at a disadvantage, she and Alice had agreed that it was not unnatural that the young wife should grow exacting and fanciful.

"Acton is about the most selfish person I ever knew," Leslie said, almost with a whimper. "Oh, yes, he is, Norma! You don't see it--but I do! Chris knows it, too; I've heard Chris call him down a thousand times for it! I am just boiling at Acton; I have been all day! He leaves everything to me, everything; and I'm not well, now, and I can't stand it! And I'll tell him I can't, too."

"I suppose a man doesn't understand very well," Norma ventured.