CHAPTER XI
A FRIEND
Monrepos, January 28.
Carin, darling:
Thank you for all your letters. You are very good to me. No matter how careless I am about writing, you never forget, you dear! And now I think I am to send you congratulations because you are engaged to that fine Vance Grévy. Truly, I think him one of the most interesting young men I have ever known. Moreover, he looks good, and true, and firm and enduring. Oh, little Carin, my own yellow-headed one, be very happy with him! I send you a thousand kisses and ten thousand good wishes, and I want you to know that if ever, ever I can do anything for you, I want to be allowed to do it. Please find something for me to do. You must not be so happy that you will forget me. I have always known there was a jealous streak in my disposition, and I am feeling it right now.
You say you have your ring? Your engagement ring! It’s not like other engagement rings? How nice! A pink pearl. Well, pearls suit you just as they do your darling mother.
I am so glad that she and your father like your Vance. Oh, fortunate girl! Always beautiful things happen to you. That, of course, is just as it ought to be. I hope they will keep right on happening to you all through life.
But, once more, in your happiness, do not forget your Azalea. For she is not very happy. No, though now she has much money and some friends—you, always, and Barbara and Annie Laurie, not to mention others—yet she is sad. Things are wrong—quite wrong.
I told you I was coming over here to visit Miss Delight Ravanel at her quaint old home, which she calls “Monrepos.” Aunt Lorena was quite willing I should come. She and I had a frank talk together, and now I understand many things that I did not before.
“I am going to ask you, Aunt Lorena,” I said to her, “if you truly like me. You mustn’t be polite, please, because that would not help me at all. You asked me to come here, and I came, and you have been very kind, and I have done the best I could. But lately there has been a change. You—you have not looked at me quite the way you used. Or at any rate, the understanding between us is not perfect. So let us speak out and say what we really think.”
A silly woman would have been disagreeable, probably, at having a young girl speak this way, but Aunt Lorena is not silly, and she is not disagreeable.