"Oh! oh!" Helen put her head down suddenly and pressed her lips on the jeweled hand. The unconscious and impulsive homage touched the old heart.
"And people who have done wonderful things, who have painted pictures, and made beautiful statues, and built bridges and churches and palaces," the girl assumed.
"Most of them were built before my time, hundreds of years ago. But I have been in a great many of them."
"And seen the Queen!"
"If you mean Queen Victoria, yes. And other queens as well. And the Empress of the French when she had her beauty and her throne."
"Oh, dear!" sighed Helen with a long breath. And Aunt Jane had called her a queer old woman; Aunt Jane, who had never even been to New York.
It was getting too dark to play croquet. Mrs. Disbrowe had gone in some time ago with her baby in her arms, and somehow it had suggested the Madonna picture to Helen. The gentlemen smoked and talked. Then Mrs. Van Dorn rose and bade them good-night, and pressed Helen's hand.
"I think I shall like your little girl very much," she said to Mrs. Dayton, in the hall. "She's modest and not at all dull."
Mrs. Van Dorn stepped off, as if she was still at middle life. She was wonderfully well preserved, but then, for almost forty years she had taken the best of care of herself. She wouldn't have admitted to anyone that she was past eighty. Sometimes in her travels she had a maid, often when she was abroad she had both a maid and a man. For two years she had been traveling about her own country, and seeing the changes.
Yet her life had not been set in rose leaves in her youth. She had worked hard, had a lover who jilted her for a girl not half as pretty but rich. And when she was thirty-five, a rich old man married her, and gave her a lovely home; then, ten years afterward, left her a rich widow, and told her to have the best time she could. If she could only have had one little girl! She thought she would adopt one, but the child with the lovely face had some mean traits, and she provided for her elsewhere. She traveled, she met entertaining people; she liked refined society; she acquired a good deal of knowledge with her pleasure.