At dinner parties he was rarely placed beside her; hers was naturally the younger set. But he found a hundred ways to remind her that he was constantly attentive. Norma would feel her heart jump in her side as he started toward her across a ball-room floor, handsome, perfectly poised, betraying nothing but generous interest in her youthful good times as he took his place beside her.

So Christmas came and went, and the last affairs of the brief season began to be announced: the last dances, the last dinners, the "pre-Lenten functions" as the papers had it. Norma, apologizing, in one of her flying calls on Aunt Kate, for the long intervals between visits, explained that she honestly did not know where the weeks flew!

"And are you happy, Baby?" her aunt asked, holding her close, and looking anxiously into her eyes.

"Oh--happy!" the girl exclaimed, with a sort of shallow, quick laugh that was quite new. "Of course I am. I never in my life dreamed that I could be so happy. I've nothing left to wish for. Except, of course, that I would like to know where I stand; I would like to have my own position a little more definite," she added. But the last phrases were uttered only in her own soul, and Mrs. Sheridan, after a rather discontented scrutiny of the face she loved so well, was obliged to change the subject.

CHAPTER XVI

In mid-Lent, when an early rush of almost summery warmth suddenly poured over the city, Chris and Norma met on the way home from church. Norma walked every Sunday morning to the big cathedral, but Chris went only once or twice a year to the fashionable Avenue church a few blocks away.

This morning he had joined her as she was quietly leaving the house, and instantly it flashed into her mind that he had deliberately planned to do so, knowing that Miss Slater, who usually accompanied her, was away for a week's vacation.

Their conversation was impersonal and casual, as always, as they walked along the drying sidewalks, in the pleasant early freshness, but as Chris left her he asked her at about what time she would be returning, and Norma was not surprised, when she came out of the cathedral, a little later than the great first tide of the outpouring congregation, to see him waiting for her.

The thought of him had been keeping her heart beating fast, and her mind in confusion, even while she tried to pray. And she had thought that she might leave the church by one of the big side doors, and so at least run a fair risk of missing him. But Norma half feared an act that would define their deepening friendship as dangerous, and half longed for the fifteen minutes of walking and chatting in the sunshine. So she came straight to him, and with no more than a word of greeting they turned north.

It was an exquisite morning, and the clean, bare stretches of the Avenue were swimming in an almost summerlike mist of opal and blue. Such persons as were visible in the streets at all were newsboys, idle policemen, or black-clad women hurrying to or from church, and when they reached the Park, it was almost deserted. The trees, gently moving in a warm breeze, were delicately etched with the first green of the year; maples and sycamores were dotted with new, golden foliage, and the gra.s.s was deep and sweet. A few riders were ambling along the bridle-path, the horses kicking up clods of the damp, soft earth.

Norma and Christopher walked slowly, talking. The girl was hardly conscious of what they said, realizing suddenly, and almost with terror, that just to be here, with Chris, was enough to flood her being with a happiness as new and miraculous as the new and miraculous springtime itself. There was no future and no past to this ecstasy, no Alice, no world; it was enough, in its first bloom, that it existed.

"You've had--what is it?--a whole year of us, Norma," Chris said, "and on the whole, it's been happy, hasn't it?"

"Fourteen months," she corrected him. "Fourteen months, at least, since Aunt Kate and I called on Aunt Marianna. Yes, it's been like a miracle, Chris. I never will understand it. I never will understand why a friendless girl--unknown and having absolutely no claim--should have been treated so wonderfully!"

"And you wouldn't want to go back?" he mused, smiling.

"No," she said, quickly. "I am afraid, when I think of ever going back!"

"I don't see why you should," Chris said. "You will inherit, through your grandmother's will----"

He had been following a train of thought, half to himself. Norma's round eyes, as she stopped short in the path, arrested him.

"My _grandmother_!" she exclaimed.

"Your Aunt Marianna," he amended, flushing. But their eyes did not move as they stared at each other.

A thousand remembered trifles flashed through Norma's whirling brain; a thousand little half-stilled suspicions leaped to new life. She had accepted the suggested kinship in childish acquiescence, but doubt was aflame now, once and for all. The man knew that there was no further evading her.

"Chris, do you know anything about me?" she asked, directly.

"Yes, I think--I know everything," he answered, after a second's hesitation.

Norma looked at him steadily. "Did you know my father and mother?" she demanded, presently, in an odd, tense voice.

There was another pause before Chris said, slowly:

"I have met your father. But I knew--I know--your mother."

"You _know_ her?" The world was whirling about Norma. "Is Aunt Kate my mother?" she asked, breathing hard.

"No. I don't know why you should not know. You call her Aunt Annie,"

Chris said.

Norma's hands dropped to her sides. She breathed as if she were suffocating.

"_Aunt Annie!_" she whispered, in stupefaction.

And she turned and walked a few steps blindly, her eyes wide and vacant, and one hand pressed to her cheek. "My G.o.d!--my G.o.d!" he heard her say.

"Annie eloped when she was a girl," Chris began presently, when she was dazedly walking on again. "She was married, and the man deserted her.

She was ill, in Germany----But shall I talk now? Would you rather not?"

"Oh, no--no! Go on," Norma said, briefly.

"Alice was the first to guess it," Christopher pursued. "Her sister doesn't know it, or dream it!"

"Aunt Annie doesn't! She does not know that I'm her own daughter!... But what _does_ she think?"

"She supposes that her baby died, dear. I'm sorry to tell you, Norma, but I couldn't lie to you! You'll understand everything, now--why your grandmother wants to make it all up to you----"

"Does Leslie know?" Norma demanded, suddenly, from a dark moment of brooding.

"n.o.body knows! Your Aunt Kate, your grandmother, Alice, and I, are absolutely the only people in the world! And Norma, _n.o.body else must know_. For the sake of the family, for everyone's sake----"

"Oh, I see that!" she answered, quickly and impatiently. And for awhile she walked on in silence, and apparently did not hear his one or two efforts to recommence the conversation. "Aunt Annie!" she said once, half aloud. And later she added, absently: "Yes, I should know!"

They had walked well up into the Park, now they turned back; the sun was getting hot, first perambulators were making their appearance, and Norma loosened her light furs.

"So I am a Melrose!" she mused. And then, abruptly: "Chris, what _is_ my name?"

"Melrose," he answered, flushing.

Her eyes asked a sudden, horrified question, and she took the answer from his look without a word. He saw the colour ebb from her face, leaving it very white.

"You said--they--my parents--were married, Chris?" she asked, painfully.

"Annie supposed they were. But he was not free!"

Norma did not speak again. In silence they crossed the Avenue, and went on down the shady side street. Chris, with chosen words and quietly, told her the story of Annie's girlhood, who and what her father had been, the bitter grief of her grandmother, the general hushing up of the whole affair. He watched her anxiously as he talked, for there was a drawn, set look to her face that he did not like.

"Why did Aunt Kate ever decide to bring me to my--my grandmother, after so many years?" she asked.

"I'm sure I don't know that. Alice and I have fancied that Kate might have kept in touch with your father all this time, and that he might be dead now, and not likely to--make trouble."