Marcia lets hers droop, and does this time manage a faint color. There is a touch of romance in this utter desolation.
"I must go," she again declares, reluctantly. "Poor Dolly will be tired to death standing."
"Take these with you, and I shall be sure of another visit," and he hands her the roll.
Marcia glides along as if on air. To her any admiration from a man is sweet incense. It is not so much the person as the food to her vanity. There are women who enjoy the gift with but little thought of the giver. In Mrs. Vandervoort's spacious parlors she has received compliments and attentions from people of note with a thrill of triumph; she is not less pleased with her present interview. It is almost as if Wilmarth had asked her for sympathy, interest, and she has so much to bestow. Gertrude has spent her days in novel-reading, going into other people's joys and woes. Marcia always lives in them directly. She recasts the events, and makes herself the centre of the episode. She is quite certain she could have done better in the exigency than the friend she contemplates. She could have loved more deeply, been wiser, stronger, tenderer, and more patient. There would be no end to her virtues or her devotion. Men are certainly short-sighted to choose these weak or cold or indifferent women, when there are others with just the right mental equipoise.
She springs into her phaeton and starts up Dolly. There is a quiver and glow of spring in the air, grown softer since morning, a breath of sweetness, and Marcia's mood is exultant. She has bearded the lion in his den, and his roar was not terrific. It is the power of Una, the sweet and gentle woman. How desperately melancholy he looked; what a touch of cynicism there was in his tone, engendered by loneliness and too much communing with self. Instantly she feels herself capable of consoling, of restoring to hope, to animation, to the delights of living.
And Marcia enjoys living very much indeed, if she can only have money. There never has been a day when she would have exchanged her pony for Laura's piano. She can play with considerable fashionable brilliance, but of the divine compensations of music she knows nothing. When Violet sits and plays for hours without an audience it seems silly to Marcia. She cannot understand the subtle and intense delight; for her there must always be one in the audience, if no more.
She wears an air of mystery at the dinner-table, and is apparently abstracted trying on her new emotions. Floyd is wondering if all this has not been very dull for Violet. If there only was some one to take a vital interest in her. They have begun to make neighborhood calls, and cards are left for Mrs. Floyd Grandon, invitations to teas and quiet gatherings. Violet cannot go alone, and Floyd is so often engaged or away. Mrs. Grandon does not trouble herself about her daughter-in-law, and says frankly to intimates,—
"Floyd's marriage always will be a great disappointment to me. She is such a child, just a fit companion for Cecil!"
When Floyd watches her in his questioning way her sweet face brightens and her soft brown eyes glow with delight.
"I wonder if you are happy?" he says this evening when they are alone.