Just then Cummings came in with a glass of water. Mrs. Danforth opened her eyes, drank the water, and appeared instantly better. “I have these dizzy attacks once in a while, Miss Warren,” she said in her usual stately manner, “but they pass off quickly. I am sorry this happened while you were here. Thank you for coming. I am sure you will find Bettina March a very useful woman.”
Then Ruth Warren, turning many things over in her mind, went home, leaving Mrs. Danforth to her pride and loneliness.
It had chanced that, coming from a drive by way of Berkeley Avenue the day before, and having Elsa with her, Mrs. Danforth had met a young, fair-haired, plainly dressed woman walking along slowly between a boy and a girl who looked very much alike, although the boy was the taller.
Mrs. Holt had been to the shops that afternoon with her children, and in the basket which Ben was carrying so carefully, were the precious Christmas remembrances they had bought for the dear father out in Colorado. Mrs. Holt’s face was unusually sad, for this would be the first Christmas that she had ever been parted from her husband, and she felt the separation more and more keenly as the days drew near to Christmas.
Elsa had leaned forward and waved eagerly behind the closed window of the coupé. The twins had smilingly waved their hands in turn. The tired-looking, sad-faced mother, in bowing to Elsa, had given a sudden, startled look at Mrs. Danforth.
The encounter had been over in a half-moment, for the strong gray horse was going swiftly toward home.
“It is Alice and Ben and their mother, grandmother,” Elsa had cried excitedly. “Don’t you remember about ‘Sweet Alice and Ben Bolt?’ Only their name is Holt.”
Fearing that her grandmother’s silence meant reproof, Elsa had looked around. Mrs. Danforth was sitting very white-faced and rigid, against the coupé cushions. She did not speak again during the drive.
This was the first time that Mrs. Danforth and Mrs. Holt had met, face to face, in Berkeley; and it was the memory of this meeting, which Mrs. Danforth could not put out of her mind, that kept her in her own room the next day. Through shutting out love from her life, Mrs. Danforth had burnt her heart almost to ashes.