"Right here, Aunt Marianna!" Norma answered, soothingly. And Chris was indeed leaning over the bed almost before she finished speaking.

"I want to talk to you and Chris," the old lady said, contentedly closing her eyes. "Everybody else out!" she whispered.

The room was immediately cleared. "It can't hurt her now!" Doctor Murray looked rather than said to Norma as he pa.s.sed her. Chris watched the closing doors, sat beside the bed's head with one arm half-supporting his mother-in-law's pillows.

"We're all alone, Aunt Marianna," he said. "Leslie and Annie will be here in the morning, and Alice told me to tell you that she hoped----"

"Chris," the sick woman interrupted, gazing at him with an intense and painful stare, "this child here--Norma! I--I must straighten it all out now, Chris. Kate knows. Kate has all the papers--letters--Louison's letters! Ask Kate----"

She shut her eyes. Norma and Chris looked at one another in bewilderment. There was a long silence.

"So now you know!" Mrs. Melrose said, presently, returning to full consciousness as naturally as she had before. "I told you, didn't I?"

she asked, faintly anxious.

"Don't bother now, Aunt Marianna," the girl begged in distress.

"To-morrow----"

"Louison," Mrs. Melrose said, "was Annie's French maid--very superior girl!"

"I remember her--Theodore's wife," Chris said, eager to help her.

"And she was this girl's mother," Mrs. Melrose added, clasping Norma's fingers. "You understand that, Chris?"

"Yes, darling--we understand!" Norma said, with a nod to Chris that he was to humour her. But Chris looked only strangely troubled.

"Annie's poor baby lived--Kate brought it home from France, and we named it Leslie," the invalid said, clearly. "I couldn't--I couldn't forget it, Chris. I used to go see it--at Kate's. And then, when it was three, I met Louison--poor girl, I had been cruel to her--and Theodore was far off in California--dying, we knew. And I met Louison in Brooklyn. And I had a sudden idea, Chris! I told her to go to Kate, and get Annie's baby, and bring it to me as if it was her own. I told her to! I told her to say that it was her baby--Theodore's baby. And she did, Chris, and I paid her well for it. She brought Leslie here, and Annie never knew--n.o.body ever knew! But I never knew that Louison had a baby of her own, Chris--I never knew that! Louison hated me, and she never told me she had a little girl. No--no--no, I never knew that!"

"Then Leslie--is--Annie's child by Muller, the riding master!" Chris whispered, staring blindly ahead of him. "And what--what became of the other child--Theodore's child?"

"Louison kept her until she was five," the old lady explained, eagerly, "and then she wanted to marry again, and she had to go live in a wild sort of place, in Canada. She didn't want to take the little girl there, and she remembered Kate Sheridan, who had had the other baby, and who had been so good to it--so devoted to it! And she went there, Chris, and left her baby there."

"And that baby----" Chris began.

"Yes. That was Norma!" Mrs. Melrose said. "It is all Norma's, the whole thing--and you must take care that she gets it, Chris. I--even my will, dear, only gives Norma the Melrose Building and some bonds. But those are for Leslie, now, all the rest--the whole estate goes to Theodore's child--Norma. You must forgive me if I did it all wrong. I meant it for the best. I never knew that you were living, dear, until Kate brought you here three years ago. She didn't dare do it until your mother died; she had promised she would never tell a living soul. But Louison softened toward the end, and wrote Kate she must use her own judgment.

And Kate--Kate--knows all about it----"

The voice thickened. The old lady raised herself in bed.

"That man--behind you, Chris!" she gasped. Chris put her down again, Norma flew for help. The muttering and the heavy breathing recommenced.

Nurses and doctors ran back, Regina came to kneel at the foot of the bed.

Another slight stroke, they said later, when they were all about the fire in the next room again. Norma was white, her eyes glittering, her bitten lips scarlet in her colourless face. Chris looked stunned.

But he found time for just one aside, as the endless night wore on.

Annie had arrived, superbly horrified and stricken, and Acton was there.

Mrs. Melrose was still breathing. The sickly light of a winter morning was tugging at the shutters.

"Norma," Chris said, "do you realize what a tremendous thing has happened to you? Do you realize who you are? You are a rich woman now, my dear!"

"But do you believe it?" she asked, in a low tone.

"I know it is true! It explains everything," he answered. "It will be a cruel blow to Leslie--poor child, and Annie, too. Alice, I think, need never know. But Norma--even though this doesn't seem the time or the place, let me be the first to congratulate you on your new position--my old friend Theodore's daughter, and the last of the Melroses!"

At seven o'clock in the morning Norma, exhausted with excitement and emotion, took a hot bath, and finding things unchanged in the sick-room, except that the lights had been extinguished, and the winter daylight was drearily mingling with firelight, went on downstairs for coffee and for one more conference with the blinking nurses and the tired old doctor. She found herself too shaken to eat, but the hot drink was wonderfully soothing and stimulating, and for the first time, as she stood looking out into the street from the dining-room window, a sense of power and pride began to thrill her. Old people must die, of course, and after this sad and dark scene was over--then what? Then what? Then she would be in Leslie's long-envied place, the heiress, the important figure among all the changes that followed.

"If you please, Mrs. Sheridan----!" It was Joseph, haggard and white, who had come softly behind her to interrupt her thoughts. She glanced with quick apprehension toward the hall stairway. There had been a change----?

"No, it was the telephone, Miss." Norma, puzzled by the old butler's stricken air, went to the instrument. It was Miss Slater.

"Norma," Miss Slater said, agitatedly, "is Mr. Liggett--there?"

"I think he's with Aunt Annie, upstairs, but he's going home about eight," Norma answered. "There is no change. Is Aunt Alice awake? Mr.

Liggett wanted to be there when she woke!"

"No--she's not awake," the other woman's voice said, solemnly. "She went to sleep like a child last night, Norma. But about half an hour ago I went in--she hadn't called me--it was just instinct, I suppose! She was lying--hadn't changed her position even----"

"_What's that!_" Norma cried, in a whisper that was like a scream. The grave voice and the sudden break of tears chilled her to the soul.

"We've had Doctor Merrill here," Miss Slater said. "Norma, you'll have to tell him--G.o.d help us all! She's gone!"

CHAPTER x.x.xI

Mrs. Melrose never spoke again, or showed another flicker of the clear and normal intelligence that she had shown in the night. But she still breathed, and the long, wet day dragged slowly, in the big, mournful old house, until late in the unnatural afternoon. People--all sorts of people--were coming and going now, and being answered, or being turned away; a few privileged old friends came softly up the carpeted stairs, and cried quietly with Annie, who looked unbelievably old and ashen under the double shock. Norma began to hear, on all sides, respectful and sympathetic references to "the family." The family felt this, and would like that, the family was not seeing any one, the family must be protected and considered in every way. The privileged old friends talked with strange men in the lower hall, and were heard saying "I suppose so"

dubiously, to questions of hats and veils and carriages and the church.

Chris was gone all day, but at four o'clock an urgent message was sent him, and he and Acton came into Mrs. Melrose's room about half an hour later, for the end. His face was ghastly, and he seemed almost unable to understand what was said to him, but he was very quiet.

Norma never forgot the scene. She knelt on one side of the bed, praying with all the concentration and fervour that she could rally under the circ.u.mstances. But her frightened, tired eyes were impressed with every detail of the dark old stately bedroom none the less. This was the end of the road, for youth and beauty and power and wealth, this sunken, unrecognizable face, this gathering of shadows among the dull, wintry shadows of the afternoon.

Annie was kneeling, too, her fine, unringed hands clasping one of her mother's hands. Chris sat against the back of the bed, half-supporting the piled pillows, in a futile attempt to make more easy the fighting breath, and Acton and Hendrick von Behrens, grave and awed, stood beside him, their faces full of sympathy and distress. There was an outer fringe of nurses, doctors, maids; there was even an audible whisper from one of them that caused Annie to frown, annoyed and rebuking, over her shoulder.

Minutes pa.s.sed. Norma, pressing her cheek against the hand she held, began a Litany, very low. Suddenly the dying woman opened her eyes.

"Yes--yes--yes!" she whispered, eagerly, and with a break in her frightened voice Norma began more clearly, "Our Father, Who art in Heaven----" and they all joined in, somewhat awkwardly and uncertainly.

Mrs. Melrose sank back; she had raised herself just a fraction of an inch to speak. Now her head fell, and Norma saw the florid colour drain from her face as wine drains from an overturned gla.s.s. A leaden pallor settled suddenly upon her. When the prayer was finished they waited--eyed each other--waited again. There was no other breath.

"Doctor----" Annie cried, choking. The doctor gently laid down the limp hand he had raised; it was already cool. And behind him the maids began to sob and wail unrebuked.

Norma went out into the hall dazed and shaken. This was her first sight of death. It made her feel a little faint and sick. Chris came and talked to her for a few minutes; Annie had collapsed utterly, and was under the doctor's care; Acton broke down, too, and Norma heard Chris attempting to quiet him. There was audible sobbing all over the house when, an hour or two later, Alice's beautiful body in a magnificent casket was brought to lie in the old home beside the mother she had adored.

The fragrance of ma.s.ses and ma.s.ses of damp flowers began to penetrate everywhere, and Norma made occasional pilgrimages in to Annie's bedside, and told her what beautiful offerings were coming and coming and coming.

Joseph had reinforcements of sympathetic, black-clad young men, who kept opening the front door, and murmuring at the m.u.f.fled telephone. Annie's secretary, a young woman about Norma's age, was detailed by Hendrick to keep cards and messages straight--for every little courtesy must be acknowledged on Annie's black-bordered card within a few weeks'

time--and Norma heard Joseph telephoning several of the prominent florists that Mr. Liggett had directed that all flowers were to come to the Melrose house. Nothing was overlooked.