CHAPTER XXXV.ALICE AND MAGDALEN.
Magdalen gave one anxious glance at herself in the mirror as she sprang up, and then hastened to unbolt the door and admit Alice Grey. She knew it was Alice, though she had never imagined her one half so beautiful as she seemed now in her white dress, with her chestnut hair falling in soft curls about her face and neck, and her great dreamy blue eyes, which had something so pitiful and pleading in their expression. She was very slight and not as tall as Magdalen, who felt herself a great deal larger and older than the little, pale-faced girl, whose white cheeks had in them just the faintest coloring of pink as she held out her hand and said, “You are Miss Lennox, I know. Auntie wanted me to wait till she could introduce me, or till you came down to dinner, but I was anxious to see somebody young and new, and fresh. I go out so little that I get tired of the faces seen every day.”
“Perhaps you will get tired of mine,” Magdalen suggested, laughingly.
“Perhaps I may, but it will be a long time first,” Alice replied, leading Magdalen to the window where she could see her more distinctly.
There was an expression of surprise or wonder, or both, in her face now, as she said, “Where have I met you before, Miss Lennox?”
“I do not think we have ever met before; at least not to my knowledge,” Magdalen replied, while Alice continued:
“I must have seen you or somebody like you. I can’t be mistaken in those eyes. Why, they are like—”
Alice stopped suddenly, and the color all faded from her cheeks and lips, while Magdalen looked curiously at her.
“You’ve never been abroad?” Alice asked, after a moment, during which she had studied Magdalen closely.
“Never,” was the reply, and Alice continued:
“And I have been away seven years, and so it cannot be; but you do not seem a stranger, and I am so glad. I opposed your coming at first,—that is, I was opposed to having any one come just to entertain me, and when auntie wrote from New York that she had engaged a Miss Lennox, I saw you directly, some tall, lank, ugly woman, who wore glasses and would bore me terribly.”
“Do I come up to your ideal,” Magdalen asked, her heart warming more and more toward the young girl, who replied:
“You are seeking for a compliment, for of course you know just how beautiful and brilliant and sparkling you are; only that sudden turn of your head and flash of your eyes does bother me so. And you are young, too. As young as I am, I guess. I am twenty-one.”
“And I am nineteen,” Magdalen rejoined, while Alice exclaimed:
“Only nineteen! Thatisyoung to be doing for one’s self; young to come here, to care for me, inthishouse.”
She seemed to be talking in an absent kind of way, and hereyes, which were looking far off across the river, had in them a sad, sorry expression, as if to care forher, inthathouse, was a lot not to be envied. Turning suddenly to Magdalen, she asked: “Are you nervous, Miss Lennox?”
That was the fourth time this question had been put to Magdalen, who laughed a little hysterically as she replied:
“I never supposed I was, but fear I shall be if questioned again upon the subject. Your aunt asked me twice if I was nervous, and Mr. Guy Seymour once.”
As she said the last name, Alice colored a little, but she merely answered:
“You saw cousin Guy in New York; auntie’s husband was his uncle, but I call him cousin just the same. Did he say when he was coming to Beechwood?”
“At Christmas, I believe,” Magdalen replied, wondering that Alice paid no heed to what she had said of her nervousness.
She was standing with her hands clasped, and the same expression in her eyes which Magdalen had observed before. She was evidently thinking of something foreign to Guy Seymour, or nervousness, and she stood thus until Magdalen heard in the hall outside the opening of a door, and caught the faintest possible sound like a human cry. She might not have noticed it at all but for the effect it had on Alice, who started suddenly from her dreamy attitude, and said:
“I must go now, Miss Lennox. I shall see you at dinner, which will be served in an hour. I am so glad you have come to me. I feel stronger with you already,—feel as if you would do me good,—do us all good, perhaps.Au revoir, till dinner time.”
She flitted from the room, and Magdalen heard again the quick closing of a door down the hall. Then all was still, and the house was as silent as if she were its only occupant. It had not occurred to her that there was any mystery at Beechwood, any grief or shame which the family tried to cover up, but the moment Alice was gone she felt a weight settling down upon her, a feeling of loneliness and desolation, which shecalled homesickness, and burying her face among the pillows of the tempting-looking bed, she wept bitterly for a few moments. Then, remembering dinner, she dried her eyes and commenced unpacking her trunks, which had been sent up while Alice was with her.
“I shall not be expected to dress much. This will do very nicely,” she thought, as she shook out the folds of a heavy black silk, made the winter before by Mrs. Irving’s dressmaker.
It was trimmed with the softest, daintiest lace, for everything pertaining to her wardrobe had been perfect, and she looked fit to grace any assemblage when at last Alice came to take her down to the parlor, where Arthur Grey was waiting for them.