Alice looked oddly tired, but her eyes were shining brightly, and Norma was charmingly happy and at ease. She jumped up to shake hands with Acton with a bright comment that he was not in the _least_ like his brother, and recalled herself to Leslie before offering her all sorts of good wishes. Norma, hoping that it would some day occur, had indeed antic.i.p.ated this meeting with Leslie by a little mental consideration of what she should say, but the effect was so spontaneous and sincere that the four were enabled to settle down comfortably to tea, in a few moments, like old friends.

"Miss Sheridan--or Norma, rather--and I have been having a perfectly delicious talk," said Alice. "She loves Christina Rossetti, and she knew the 'Hound of Heaven' by heart, and she has promised to send me a new man's work that sounds delightful--what was it? Something about General Booth?"

"If I haven't chattered you to death!" Norma said, penitentially. And Leslie added: "Aunt Alice, you _do_ look tired! Not that talking poetry ever would tire you!" she hastened to add, with a smile for Norma.

"No, I'm not--or rather, I was, but I feel wonderfully!" Alice said.

"Pour the tea, Kitten. What have you two little adventurers been doing with yourselves?"

"Mrs. Dupre's party--Yvette Guilbert," Leslie said. "She is quite too wonderful!"

"I've always wanted to see her, and I've always known I would adore her," Norma interpolated, dreamily.

Alice glanced at her quickly.

"Does she give another matinee, Leslie?"

"Two----" Leslie looked at Acton. "Is it two weeks from to-day?" she questioned.

"I'll send you seats for it," Alice said, making a little note on her ivory memoranda pages, as she nodded to Norma. The colour rushed into Norma's face, and she bit her lip.

"But, Mrs. Liggett--honestly--I truly didn't mean--I only meant----" she began to stammer, half laughing. Alice laid her hand upon Norma's rea.s.suringly.

"My dear, you know I don't think you hinted! But I want to do it. I can't"--Alice said, smiling--"I can't do anything for little Miss Aladdin here, and it gives me the greatest pleasure, now and then----"

"I want to tell you something about Mrs. Liggett," Acton said; "she's got a grasping nature and a mean soul--you can see that! She's the limit, all right!" He smiled down at her as he gave her her teacup, and Leslie laughed outright. Acton was a person of few words, but when he chose to talk, Leslie found his manner amusing. Christopher, coming up to join them fifteen minutes later, said that from the noise they made he had supposed at least fifty persons to be in his wife's room.

Did Norma, as she gave the master of the house her hand, have sudden memory of all her recent absurd extravagances in his name--the games, the surmises, the wild statements that had had Chris Liggett as their inspiration? If she did, she gave no sign of it beyond the bright flush with which she greeted her oldest acquaintance in this group.

Christopher sat down, content to be a listener and an onlooker, as he sipped his tea, but Norma saw that his wife's look of white fatigue made him uneasy, and immediately said that she must go.

He made no protest, but said that the car was at the door, and she must let him send her home. Norma agreed, and Acton asked if he and Leslie might not use it, too. The three departed in high spirits, Alice detaining the radiant and excited Norma long enough to exact from her the promise of another visit soon, and to send an affectionate message to Mrs. Sheridan from "Miss Alice." Then they went down to the big car, an exciting and delightful experience to Norma.

Leslie was left first, and Acton, pleading that he was already late for another engagement, was dropped at his club. Then Norma had the car to herself, and as it smoothly flew toward the humble doorway of the Sheridans, could giggle, almost aloud, in her pleasure and exhilaration at an afternoon that had gone without a single awkward minute, all pleasant, harmonious, and vaguely flattering. And the wonderful Mrs.

Liggett had asked her to come soon again, and had made that delightful suggestion about the concert. The name of Yvette Guilbert meant little to Norma, but the thought that Alice Liggett really wanted to hold her friendship was nothing less than intoxicating.

She looked out of the car, the streets were bare of snow now, there was not a leaf showing in the park, and the ground was dark and unpromising.

But a cool, steady wind was blowing through the lingering twilight, men were running after rolling hats, and at least the milliners' windows were radiant with springtime bloom. Children were playing in Norma's street, wrapped and m.u.f.fled children, wild with joy to be out of doors again, and a tiny frail little moon was floating in the opal sky just above the grim line of roofs. Norma looked up at it, and the pure blowing air touched her hot face, and her heart sang with the sheer joy of living.

CHAPTER VII

Christopher had gone down to the door with his brother and the girls, and had sent a glance up and down the quiet, handsome block, feeling in the moving air what Norma felt, what all the city felt--the bold, wild promise of spring. He turned back into the house with something like a sigh; Acton and Leslie in their young happiness were somehow a little haunting to-night.

The butler was starting upstairs with the papers; Christopher took them from him, and went back to Alice's room with his eyes idly following the headlines. The pretty apartment was somewhat disordered, and looked dull and dark in the half light. Christopher walked to a window, and pushed it open upon its railed balcony.

"Chris!" whispered his wife's voice, thick and dry in the gloom.

Aghast in the instant apprehension of something wrong, he sprang to her couch, dropped to his knees, and put an arm about her.

"Alice! What is it, my darling?"

She struggled for speech, and he could see that her face was ashen.

"Chris--no, don't ring. Chris, _who is that girl_?"

Christopher touched the chain that flooded the couch with rosy light. He bent in eager sympathy over his wife's relaxed form.

"Alice, what is it?" he asked, tenderly. "Don't worry, dear, don't try to talk too fast! Just tell Chris what frightened you----"

Alice laughed wretchedly as she detached the fingers he had pressed anxiously upon her forehead.

"No, I'm not feverish!" she a.s.sured him, holding tight to his hand. "But I want you to tell me, Chris, I must know--and no matter what promise you have given Mother--or given any one----"

"Now, now, now!" he soothed her. "I'll tell you anything, sweetheart, only don't let yourself get so excited. Just tell me what it is, Alice, and I'll do anything in the world for you, of course!"

"Chris," she said, swallowing with a dry throat, and sitting up with an air of regaining self-control, "you must tell me. You know you can trust me, you _know_----! That girl----"

"But _what_ girl--what are you talking about, dear? Do--do try to be just a little clearer, and calmer----"

"Who"--said Alice, with a ghastly look, sweeping the hair back from her damp forehead--"who is that Norma Sheridan?"

"Why, I told you, dear, that I don't know," her husband protested. "I told you weeks ago, after your mother made that scene, the night of Hendrick's speech, that I couldn't make head or tail of it!"

"Chris"--Alice was regarding him fixedly--"you _must_ know!"

"Dearest, couldn't your mother simply wish to befriend a girl whose parents----"

Alice flung her loosened hair back, and at her gesture and her glance at the little carafe on her table he poured her a gla.s.s of cold water.

Drinking it off, and raising herself in her cushions, she stretched her hand to touch the chair beside her, and still without a word indicated that he was to take it. With a face of grave concern Christopher sat down beside her, holding her hands in both his own.

"Chris," she said, clearly and quickly, if with occasional catches of breath, "the minute that girl came into the room I knew that--I knew that _horror_ had come upon us all! I knew that she was one of us--one of us Melroses, somehow----"

"Alice!" he said, pleadingly.

"But Mama," she said, with a keen look, "didn't tell you that?"

"She told me only what I told you that night, on my honour as a gentleman! Alice, what makes you say what you do?"

"Ah, Chris," his wife cried, almost frantically, "look at her! _Look_ at her! Why, her voice is Annie's, the same identical voice--she looks like my father, like Theodore--she looks like us all! She and Leslie were so much alike, as they sat there, in spite of the colouring, that I almost screamed it at them! Surely--surely, you see it--everyone sees it!"

He stared at her, beginning to breathe a little quickly in his turn.

"By George!" she heard him whisper, as if to himself.

"Do you see it, Chris?" Alice whispered, almost fearfully.

"But--but----" He got up and walked restlessly to the window, and came back to sit down again. "But there's a cousinship somewhere," he said, sensibly. "There's no reason to suppose that the thing can't be explained. I do think you're taking this thing pretty hard, my dear.