"For what is he praying?"
"A razor—that would cut his fingers—so he must not have it. Now, lest you should 'imagine vain things,' I wish you to know that Mr. Noel has not renewed his proposal of marriage, and I hope never will. It is only just to him that you should fully understand he is now no suitor. He is simply my loyal, noble friend, in whom I trust implicitly. Good-night, Madrecita."
CHAPTER XVI
It had been a cold, cloudy January day in one of the great northern cities, and with night came flurries of snow that powdered telegraph wires and danced like thistledown around the corners. Two and a half years had elapsed since the angel of death stooped to swing his sickle in the daisy meadow on Long Island, and in a low, wide basement room, fronting the street, Mrs. Dane sat at her sewing machine, hemming a child's check aprons piled on a chair. The apartment was plainly but comfortably furnished, and filled now with the pungent odor of ginger, cloves, and cinnamon from a pan of small cakes on the top of an oil stove. The gas jet above her heightened the metallic lustre of her abundant hair, and deepened fringy shadows cast by her thick, dusky lashes. Upon the beautiful face time had softly pressed its velvet palm, smoothing the angles of bitterness and wrath that had been intensified by the struggle with her husband, whom she now believed she had eluded forever by removing to another city. On the broad windowsill at her right stood an oval, brass filigree frame holding a photograph of Leighton in his chorister vestments, and in front of the picture a dozen violets filled a wine-glass. As she finished and folded an apron, leaning forward to place it on the chair, her glance fell on the photograph, rested there, and the ocean of the past moaned, surged, broke over her. Despite her persistent scoffing moods, she had found it impossible to forget the few lines Father Temple had repeated with a faltering voice after the grave closed over the sweet young singer of St. Hyacinth's. They haunted some chamber of her defiant soul, and when she gazed at the holy face of her boy they stole out and whispered:
"Another lamb, O Lamb of God, behold
Within this quiet fold,
Among Thy Father's sheep
I lay to sleep!
A heart that never for a night did rest
Beyond its mother's breast.
Lord, keep it close to Thee,
Lest waking it should bleat and pine for me."
A rap on her door recalled her, and she swept one hand across her misty eyes.
"Come in."
A man of middle age, low in stature, and muffled to the chin in a handsome overcoat, stood, hat in hand, at the door.
"Mr. Coolidge, I am surprised to see you, and you have made a mistake in coming to my lodgings. I will not ask you to be seated, because I do not wish to receive you."