A Modern Madonna

by Caroline Abbot Stanley

"Mr. De Jarnette is down stairs, Miss."

"Mr. De Jarnette? What in the world has he come for at this time of day?" wondered Margaret. "Tell him I will be down at once."

"It a—ain't Mr. R—r—richard De Jarnette, Miss," said the man, stammering in his excitement, "it's Mr. Victor."

Victor! and announced like a stranger in his own home! She hardly knew the sound of her own voice as she answered, "Tell him I will be down at once."

At the door of the parlor she stopped. Her heart was beating so tumultuously it seemed to her that she would suffocate. She threw her head back as one who struggles for breath. Then she went in, closing the door behind her.

What passed in that interview nobody ever knew. The air was rife the next day with what it might have been; but the only thing ever reported was a fragment overheard by the mulatto who answered the bell, and who at that particular time was alert to do his duty. He related to Richard De Jarnette the next day that as Mr. Victor opened the door to leave the parlor he heard him say. "Whatever you do, you may as well understand now that I shall never relinquish my claim to—" here the man said he missed something because it was spoken in a lower tone, but he was sure it must have been something about money, for he distinctly heard him use the word claim.

From that interview Margaret went to her room, and later from the house, with a face so white and haggard that as Mammy Cely related to Richard De Jarnette, who called, enquiring for Victor, a half hour after she was gone, she was actually afraid of what she might do to herself.

"She seemed sorter desprit, Marse Richard," she concluded, with the freedom of an old family servant, "and sorter wild-like. No, sir, I didn't know what she was goin' to do. I don't know now!... When she come up stairs she tuk that chile—we had done come back fum the Circle, 'cause Mr. Victor was here some right smart while—she tuk it, she did, and set down and helt it so tight the little thing cried. Yaas, sir, it did! And look lak she didn' even know it was frettin'. She jes' set there, holdin' it clost, and weavin' back and fo'th, back and fo'th, tell I got right fidgity. After a while she got up and give him to me, and say she was goin' down to see Jedge Kirtley. And she says, 'Mammy Cely,' she says, 'don't you let anybody even see Philip while I am gone. Don't you let him out of yo' sight,' she says. Look lak she was takin' somethin' mighty hard."

"She was naturally excited over Mr. De Jarnette's return," said Richard. But he left the house abruptly and called a passing cab to take him to his office. He was more disturbed at what he had heard than he would admit to Mammy Cely.

Victor had had a long talk with him before going to Margaret. In fact, he had gone directly to Richard upon reaching the city the night before, a fact that had appealed insensibly to Richard's heart. He had not seen him since, and feeling vaguely uneasy, he had at last gone to the Massachusetts Avenue house, hoping to find him there and hoping also that by that time things might have been satisfactorily arranged. Mammy Cely's account of Margaret's condition made him distinctly apprehensive. It did not look as if a reconciliation had taken place, to say the least. He must find out first of all where Victor was.