“Yes, Madame. I knew her as a child in her grandfather's house. I was scarcely more than a boy myself at the time; but had the interval been four times as great, I could not forget all that I owe to his kindness and to hers.”
I could scarcely utter the last words from emotion. The child Margot—a beautiful woman, graceful and fascinating—now stood before me, changed, but still the same; her dark eyes darker and more meaning; her fair brow expanded and more lofty.
“You know my story?” asked she, in a low, soft voice.
“Yes, Margot. And oftentimes in my saddest hours have I sought excitement and relief in the thought of your triumphs—”
“There, child,—there!” exclaimed the elder, enthusiastically, “there is at least one who can prize the glorious ambitions of the scene, and knows how to appreciate the successes of high art. Stand not abashed before him, child; he comes not here as your accuser.”
“Is it so indeed?” cried Margot, entreatingly.
“Oh, if you but knew, Margot, how proudly I have often pondered over our hours of the past,—now fancying that in my teachings of those days some germ of that high ambition you have tried to reach may then have been dropped into your heart; now wondering if in your successes some memory of me might have survived. If you but knew this, Margot, you would soon see how this bright moment of our meeting repays all the sorrows of a life long.”
“I am in the third act of the drama,” said the elder lady, smiling. “Pray let me into the secret of the piece. Where, when, and how were you first acquainted?”
Margot looked at me to speak; but I returned her glance so entreatingly that, taking her friend's hand between her own, she seated her at her side and began.
While she narrated the story of our first meeting, I had full time to look at her, and see the changes a few years had made. Beautiful as she had been in childhood, far more lovely was she now in the grace of developed beauty. Her art, too, had cultivated expression to its very highest point, yet without exaggerating a trait of her features; the tones of her voice had in them a melody I had never heard before; and I hung on her very utterance as though it were music!