“Thank you, Kate. You have been a true sister all these years. I took Marguerite and some material to Madame Blauvelt this morning. She thought that green cloth would make a very becoming suit and the lavender grey. They will not go out much this winter now that the holidays are over, and they are too young.”
Miss Crawford only said, “Oh, very well.”
The mother had a half guilty feeling as if she had unduly asserted herself, yet she was inexpressibly happy.
There were calls in the afternoon and Zaidee sat alone in her room leaning her chin on her hand and glancing out of the window.
In a way she had been the family heroine.
The twin sister who might have been so dear had been wrenched out of her life. She had thought of her, dreamed of her, although she had been well content to fill the place of an only daughter with this faint shadow of sorrow hanging over her; and suddenly, she had been uprooted, flung aside as it were, and another had stepped into her place. She did not like it. If it had been from the beginning! If it had come about some other way. If someone had sent from that Western town. Would the girls who had held themselves above the Boyd connection feel mortified at many of the comments they had made? She was glad she had held up some supposititious cases; though, truth to tell, Zaidee felt too secure of her own standing to need any propping, and there was a strand of independence in her character, but she had been first all her life and in a curious fashion she would lose that eminence.
Of course, in time she would love Marguerite. One could not do it in a moment. That was the salve she was applying to her conscience. When they had known each other for months, learned and respected each others’ peculiarities, love would come. She had not felt inclined to fling herself in Lilian Boyd’s arms, and she had almost doubted at first. So had Aunt Kate.
Zaidee would have scouted the thought of jealousy, and if it had been suggested would have denied it vehemently. Neither was she given to analysis. Her temperament was rather volatile and pleasure loving. The things that suited her she enjoyed, the others she passed by indifferently. She did like to be made much of, and she thought she was worthy of preference. She had beauty, good nature and a heedless sort of generosity and wealth. In a certain way she saw the benefit of that quite as much as Alice Nevins though she did not esteem it the chief good.
Major Crawford came in from his walk just at dusk.
“Letters!” holding it up. “A thick packet—one for each of us, I think.”