It was perhaps for this reason that she took a wistful interest in Lizzie, who had shrunk from her at first, as the depressing image of her own probable future, but to whom she had now suddenly become an object of sentimental pity.
IV
MISS MACY’s room was next to Miss West’s, and the Southerner’s knock often appealed to Lizzie’s hospitality when Mme. Clopin’s early curfew had driven her boarders from the salon. It sounded thus one evening just as Lizzie, tired from an unusually long day of tuition, was in the act of removing her dress. She was in too indulgent a mood to withhold her “Come in,” and as Miss Macy crossed the threshold, Lizzie felt that Vincent Deering’s first letter—the letter from the train—had slipped from her loosened bodice to the floor.
Miss Macy, as promptly noting the fact, darted forward to recover the letter. Lizzie stooped also, fiercely jealous of her touch; but the other reached the precious paper first, and as she seized it, Lizzie knew that she had seen whence it fell, and was weaving round the incident a rapid web of romance.
Lizzie blushed with annoyance. “It’s too stupid, having no pockets! If one gets a letter as she is going out in the morning, she has to carry it in her blouse all day.”
Miss Macy looked at her with swimming eyes. “It’s warm from your heart!” she breathed, reluctantly yielding up the missive.
Lizzie laughed, for she knew better: she knew it was the letter that had warmed her heart. Poor Andora Macy! She would never know. Her bleak bosom would never take fire from such a contact. Lizzie looked at her with kind eyes, secretly chafing at the injustice of fate.
The next evening, on her return home, she found Andora hovering in the entrance hall.
“I thought you’d like me to put this in your own hand,” Miss Macy whispered significantly, pressing a letter upon Lizzie. “I couldn’t bear to see it lying on the table with the others.”
It was Deering’s letter from the steamer. Lizzie blushed to the forehead, but without resenting Andora’s divination. She could not have breathed a word of her bliss, but she was not altogether sorry to have it guessed, and pity for Andora’s destitution yielded to the pleasure of using it as a mirror for her own abundance. DEERING wrote again on reaching New York, a long, fond, dissatisfied letter, vague in its indication of his own projects, specific in the expression of his love. Lizzie brooded over every syllable of it till they formed the undercurrent of all her waking thoughts, and murmured through her midnight dreams; but she would have been happier if they had shed some definite light on the future.