The girl gave her a faint smile.
"Foolish question, isn't it?" she added. "I usually play awhile in the evening." She set down her cup and rose.
Geraldine rose also, looked pleased and eager.
"I'm so glad," she replied. "I have no accomplishments myself."
A vague memory of having heard something about a cruel stepmother assailed the hostess. She smiled kindly at the girl. "Some people have gifts instead," she said. "Stay here. I will go in and try to give you some happy thoughts."
Geraldine sank back in her chair, her eyes fixed on the graceful elms and the vivid streaks across a sunset sky.
As the strains of Chopin, Schumann, and Brahms came through the open window it necessitated some, effort not to have too happy thoughts. The skillful musician modulated from one number to another, and Geraldine, all ignorant in her art-starved life, of what she was hearing, gave herself up to the loveliness of sight and sound.
When Mrs. Barry reappeared, the girl's eyelids were red, and as she started up to meet her she put out her hands impulsively, and the musician laughed a little as she accepted their grasp, well pleased with the eloquent speechlessness.
When Geraldine waked the next morning her first vague thought was that she must shake off sleep and help Mrs. Carder. That troubling sense faded into another, also troubling. She was to spend a whole day, perhaps several whole days, with the rather fearful splendor of the mother of her knight. That in itself would not be so bad, Mrs. Barry had shown a kind intention, but the knight himself might return at any hour. Why had she come? Yet how refuse when her previous hostess had so energetically thrown her out of the nest?
The sun had gone behind clouds. She rose, closed her windows, and made her toilet, then descended to the hall where Mrs. Barry met her with a pleasant greeting and they went in to breakfast.