CHAPTER VIII.
EUGENIA JOINS THE SEARCH.
City towers rise now in the steam of the bubbling caldron, smoky chimney tops and high roof gardens. The clang and roar and traffic of crowded streets jangle through the silver chiming of the magic bells.
Eugenia Forbes, sitting near an open window in one of the handsomest apartments of the Waldorf-Astoria, heard none of the city's noise, saw nothing of the panorama in the restless streets below. The bell-boy had just brought her a letter, and she was reading it aloud to her maid. Patient old Eliot had taken such a deep interest in all that belonged to Lloydsboro Valley since their journey to Locust, that it was a pleasure to confide in her. Even if Eugenia had had any one else to confide in, she could have found no one who had her interest at heart more than this sensible, elderly woman, who had taken care of her for so many years.
Eugenia had not gone back to boarding-school as a regular pupil. It had scarcely seemed worth while, since she was to leave so soon for her trip abroad. But Riverdale Seminary, being in the suburbs, was not such a great distance from the hotel but that she could go out every morning for her French lesson. Knowing that she would soon have practical use for the language, she was doing extra work in French, and taking a greater interest in it than she had ever shown before in any study.
If the three girls who had been her devoted friends the year before had come back to Riverdale at the beginning of the term, she would have insisted on taking her place in the boarding-hall as a regular pupil, in order to be with them as long as possible. But the summer vacation had brought many changes. The day that Eugenia reached New York on her return from the house party, a letter had come saying that Molly Blythe would never be back at the school. There had been an accident on the mountain where she had gone to spend the summer with her family. A runaway team, a wild dash down the mountainside, and the merry picnic had ended in a sad accident. She was lying now in a long, serious illness that would either leave her a cripple for life, or take her away in a little while from the devoted family that was nearly distracted by the thought of losing her.
Kell, still in the Bermudas, was not coming back to school until after Christmas, and Fay, while she still called Eugenia her dearest, divided her affections with a blonde girl from Ohio. They had passed the summer on the same island in the St. Lawrence, and Eugenia felt that her place was taken by this stranger.
With Molly and Kell away, and Fay so changed, Eugenia would have lost all interest in the school, had it not been that she wanted to acquire as much French as possible before going abroad. In most things she was not so overbearing and thoughtless in her treatment of poor old Eliot, since her visit to Locust. The ring she wore was a daily reminder of the Road of the Loving Heart that she was trying to leave behind her in everybody's memory. But Eliot still found her patience sorely tried at times. Missing the girls at school, Eugenia was lonely, and wished a hundred times a day that she were back at the house party. Sometimes she grumbled and moped until the atmosphere around her was as gloomy and depressing as a London fog.