At dinner Miss Ramsey noticed her flushed face, and, when they went into the drawing-room, took her hands. "You are feverish," she said, "and you ate nothing."
Mariana laughed excitedly.
"No," she answered, "I am well—very well."
They sat down together, and she looked at Miss Ramsey with quick tenderness.
"Am I good to you?" she asked. "Am I good to the servants?—to everybody?"
"What is it, dear?"
"Oh, I want to begin over again—all over again! It is but fair that one should have a second chance, is it not?"
Miss Ramsey smiled.
"Some of us never have a first," she said; and Mariana took her in her arms and kissed her. "You shall have yours," she declared. "I will give it to you."
When she went up-stairs a little later she took down an old square desk from a shelf in the dressing-room and brought it to the rug before the fire. Kneeling beside it, she turned the key and raised the narrow lid of ink-stained mahogany. It was like unlocking the past years to sit surrounded by these memories in tangible forms, to smell the close, musty odor which clings about the relics of a life or a love that is dead.