When she disappeared, Marguerite rose and looked;
Lady Bluefields was gone.
She could not banish those heart-breaking words: "_When ye
beautiful swain that ye woman loved is dead_." The longing of the
past days, the sadness, the languor that was ecstasy and pain,
swept back over her as she sat listening now, hoping for another
footstep. Would he not come? She did not ask to speak with him.
If she might only see him, only feel him near for a few moments.
She quitted the library slowly at last, trying to escape notice;
and passed up the street with an unconscious slight drooping of
that aerial figure. When she reached her yard, the tree-tops
within were swaying and showing the pale gray under-surfaces of
their leaves. A storm was coming. She turned at the gate, her hat
in her hand, and looked toward the cloud with red lightnings
darting from it: a still white figure confronting that noonday
darkness of the skies.
"Grandmother never loved but once," she said. "Mamma never loved
but once: it is our fate."
III
"Anna," said Professor Hardage that same morning, coming out of his
library into the side porch where Miss Anna, sitting in a green
chair and wearing a pink apron and holding a yellow bowl with a
blue border, was seeding scarlet cherries for a brown roll, "see
what somebody has sent _me_." He held up a many-colored bouquet
tied with a brilliant ribbon; to the ribbon was pinned an
old-fashioned card.
"Ah, now, that is what comes of your being at the ball," said Miss
Anna, delighted and brimming with pride.
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