"No," she heard him say, briefly and definitely, "that's impossible!"

"It isn't the money----" Annie began. But Leslie interrupted with a bitter little laugh.

"It may not be with you, Aunt Annie, but I a.s.sure you I wouldn't mind a few extra thousands," she said.

"I think you get the Newport house, Leslie," Chris said, in a tone whose dubiety only Norma could understand.

"The Newport house!" Leslie exclaimed. "Why, but don't I own _this_, now? I thought----"

"I don't really know," Chris answered. "We'll open the will next week, and then we'll straighten everything out."

"In the meanwhile," Annie said, lazily, "if she suggests going back to her own family, for Heaven's sake don't stop her! I like Norma--always have. But after all, there are times when _any_ outsider--no matter how agreeable she is----"

"I think she'll go immediately after the funeral," Chris said, constrainedly and uncertainly.

Norma, suddenly roused both to a realization of the utter impropriety of her overhearing all this, and the danger of detection, slipped from the dressing-room by the hall door, and so escaped to her own room.

She shut the door behind her, walked irresolutely to the bed, stood there for a moment, with her hands pressed to her cheeks, walked blindly to the window, only to pause again, paced the room mechanically for a few minutes, and finally found herself seated on the broad, old-fashioned sill of the dressing-room window, staring down unseeing at the afternoon traffic in Madison Avenue.

Oh, how she hated them--cruel, selfish, self-satisfied sn.o.bs--sn.o.bs--sn.o.bs that they were! Leslie--Leslie "making allowances for her!" Leslie making allowances for _her_! And Annie--hoping that for Heaven's sake n.o.body would prevent her from going home after the funeral! The remembered phrases burned and stung like acid upon her soul; she wanted to hurt Annie and Leslie as they had hurt her, she wanted to shame them and anger them.

Yes, and she could do it, too! She could do it! They little knew that within a few days' time utter consternation and upheaval, notoriety and shame, and the pity of their intimates, would disrupt the surface of their lives, that surface that they felt it so important to keep smooth!

"People will comment," Norma quoted to herself, with a bitter smile--indeed people would comment, as they had never commented even upon the Melroses before! Leslie would be robbed not only of her inheritance but of her name and of her position. And Annie--even magnificent Aunt Annie must accept, with what surface veneer of cordiality she might affect, the only child of her only brother, the heir to the family estate.

"I believe I'm horribly tired," Norma said to herself, looking out into the dimming winter day, "or else I'm nervous, or something! I wish I could go over to Rose's and help her put the children to bed----! Or I wish Aunt Kate would telephone for me--I'm sick of this place! Or I wish Wolf would come walking around that corner--oh, if he would--if he would----!" Norma said, staring out with an intensity so great that it seemed to her for the moment that Wolf indeed might come. "If only he'd come to take me to dinner, at some little Italian place with a backyard, and skysc.r.a.pers all about, so that we could talk!"

Regina, coming in a little later, saw that Mrs. Sheridan had been crying, and reproached her with the affectionate familiarity of an old servitor.

"You that were always so light-hearted, Miss, it don't seem right for you to grieve so!" said Regina, a little tearful herself. Norma smiled, and wiped her eyes.

"This is a nice beginning," the girl told herself, as she bathed and dressed for the evening ordeal of calls, and messages, and solemn visits to the chamber of death, "this is a nice beginning for a woman who knows that the man she loves is free to marry her, and who has just fallen heir to a great fortune!"

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

The evening moved through its dark and sombre hours unchanged; Joseph's a.s.sistants opened and opened and opened the door. More flowers--more flowers--and more. Notes, telephone messages, black-clad callers murmuring in the dimness of the lower hall, maids coming noiselessly and deferentially, the clergyman, the doctor, the choir-master, old Judge Lee tremulous and tedious, all her world circled about the lifeless form of the old mistress of the house. Certain persons went quietly upstairs, women in rich furs, and bare-headed, uncomfortable-looking men, entered the front room, and pa.s.sed through with serious faces and slowly shaking heads.

Chris spoke to Norma in the hall, just after she had said good-night to some rather important callers, a.s.suring them that Annie and Leslie were well, and had been kissed herself as their representative. He extended her a crushed doc.u.ment in which she was alarmed to recognize Wolf's letter.

"Oh--I think I dropped that in Aunt Annie's dressing-room!" Norma said, turning scarlet, and wondering what eyes had seen it.

"There was no envelope; a maid brought it to her, and Annie read it,"

Chris said. Norma's eyes were racing through it.

"There are no names!" she said, thankfully.

"It would have been a most unfortunate--a--a horrible thing, if there had been," Chris commented. Something in his manner said as plainly as words that dropping the letter had been a breach of good manners, had been extremely careless, almost reprehensible. Norma felt herself unreasonably antagonized.

"Oh, I don't know! It's true," she said, recklessly.

"Annie is a very important person in your plans, Norma," Chris reminded her. "It would be most regrettable for you to lose your head now, to give everyone an opportunity of criticizing you. I should advise you to enlist your Aunt Annie's sympathies just as soon as you can. She is, of all the world, the one woman who can direct you--help you equip yourself--tell you what to get, and how to establish yourself. If Annie chose to be unfriendly, to ignore you----"

"I don't see Annie von Behrens ignoring me--now!" Norma said, with anger, and throwing her head back proudly. They were in a curtained alcove on the landing of the angled stairway, completely hidden by the great curtain and by potted palms. "When my revered aunt realizes----"

"Your money will have absolutely no effect on Annie," Chris said, quickly.

"No, but what I _am_ will!" Norma answered, breathing hard.

"Not while we keep it to ourselves, as of course we must," Chris answered, in displeasure. "No one but ourselves will ever know----"

"The whole world will know!" Norma said, in sudden impatience with smoothing and hiding and pretending. Chris straightened his eyegla.s.ses on their ribbon, and gave her his scrutinizing, unruffled glance.

"That would be foolish, I think, Norma!" he told her, calmly. "It would be a most unnecessary piece of vulgarity. Old families are constantly hushing up unfortunate chapters in their history; there is no reason why the whole thing should not be kept an absolute secret. My dear girl, you have just had a most extraordinary piece of good fortune--but you must be very careful how you take it! You will be--you are--a tremendously wealthy woman--and you will be in the public eye. Upon how you conduct yourself now your future position largely depends. Annie can--and I believe will--gladly a.s.sist you. Acton and Leslie will go abroad, I suppose--they can't live here. But a breath of scandal--or an ill-advised slip on your part--would make us all ridiculous. You must play your cards carefully. If you could stay with Annie, now----"

"I _hate_ Aunt Annie!" Norma interrupted, childishly.

"My dear girl--you're over-tired, you don't mean what you say!" Chris said, putting his hand on her arm. Under the light touch she dropped her eyes, and stood still. "Norma, do be advised by me in this," he urged her earnestly. "It is one of the most important crises in your life.

Annie can put you exactly where you want to be, introduced and accepted everywhere--a constant guest in her house, in her opera box, or Annie can drop you--I've seen her do it!--and it would take you ten years to make up the lost ground!"

"It didn't take Annie ten years to be a--a--social leader!" Norma argued, resentfully.

"Annie? Ah, my dear, a woman like Annie isn't born twice in a hundred years! She has--but you know what she has, Norma. Languages, experiences, friends--most of all she has the grand manner--the _belle aire_."

Norma was fighting to regain her composure over almost unbearable hurt and chagrin.

"But, Chris," she argued, desperately, "you've always said that you had no particular use for Annie's crowd--that you'd rather live in some little Italian place--or travel slowly through India----"

"I said I would like to do that, and so I would!" he answered. "But believe me, Norma, your money makes a very different sort of thing possible now, and you would be mad--you would be _mad_!--to throw it away. Put yourself in Annie's hands," he finished, with the first hint of his old manner that she had seen for forty-eight hours, "and have your car, your maids, your little establishment on the upper East Side, and then--then"--and now his arm was about her, and he had tipped up her face close to his own--"and then you and I will break our little surprise to them!" he said, kindly. "Only be careful, Norma. Don't let them say that you did anything ostentatious or conspicuous----"

She freed herself, her heart cold and desolate almost beyond bearing, and Chris answered her as if she had spoken.

"Yes--and I must go, too! To-morrow will be a terrible day for us all.

Oh, one thing more, Norma! Annie asked me if I had any idea of who the man was--the man Wolf speaks of there in that note--and I had to say someone, just to quiet her. So I said that I thought it was Roy Gillespie--you don't mind?--I knew he liked you tremendously, and I happened to think of him! Is that all right?"

She made no audible answer, almost immediately leaving him, and going upstairs. There was nothing to do, in her room, and she knew that she could really be of use downstairs, among the intimate old friends who were protecting Annie and Leslie from annoyance, but she felt in no mood for that. She hated herself and everybody; she was half-mad with fatigue and despondency.

Oh, what was the use of living--what was the use of living! Chris despised her; that was quite plain. He had advised her to-night as he would have advised an ignorant servant--an inexperienced commoner who might make the family ridiculous--who might lose her head, and descend to "unnecessary pieces of vulgarity!" Leslie had always "made allowances for Norma"; Annie considered her an "outsider." Wolf was going to California without her, and even Aunt Kate--even Aunt Kate had scolded her, reminded her that the Melroses had always been kind to her!

Norma's tears flowed fast, there seemed to be no end to the flood. She sopped them away with the black-bordered handkerchief, and tried walking about, and drinking cold water, but it was of no use. Her heart seemed broken, there was no avenue for her thoughts that did not lead to loneliness and grief. They had all pretended to love her--but not one of them did--not one of them did! She had never had a father, and never had a mother, she had never had a fair chance!

Money--she thought darkly. But what was the use of money if everyone hated her, if everyone thought she was selfish and stupid and ignorant and superfluous! Why find a beautiful apartment, and buy beautiful clothes, if she must flatter and cajole her way into Annie's favour to enjoy them, and bear Chris's superior disdain for her stumbling literary criticisms and her amateurish Italian?

And she was furious at Chris. How dared he--how dared he insult her by coupling her name with that of Roy Gillespie, to quiet Annie and to protect himself! She was a married woman; she had never given him any reason to take such liberties with her dignity! Roy Gillespie, indeed!

Annie was to amuse herself by fancying Norma secretly enamoured of that big, stupid, simple Gillespie boy, who was twenty-two years old, and hardly out of college! And it was for him that Norma was presumably leaving her husband!

It was insufferable. It was insufferable. She would go straight to Annie--but no, she couldn't do that. She couldn't tell Annie, on the night before Annie's sister was buried, that that same sister's husband loved and was beloved by another woman.