Margot was listening breathlessly and watching intently. At the mention of his mother a shadow crossed Adrian’s face, softening and bettering it, and his whole mood seemed to change.
Their talk drifted from vexing subjects to merry anecdotes of Adrian’s childhood, in the home where he had been the petted only brother of a half-dozen elder sisters. But while they laughed and Margot listened, her fingers were busy weaving a great garland of wild laurel, and when it was finished she rose and said:
“It’s getting late. There’ll be just time to take this to the grave. Will you go with me?”
“Yes.”
But this was another of the puzzling things he found at Peace Island. In its very loveliest nook was the last resting-place of Cecily Romeyn, and the sacred spot was always beautiful with flowers, or in the winter, with brilliant berries. Both the master and the girl spoke of their dead as if she were still present with them; or at least lived as if she were only removed from sight but not from their lives.
When Margot had laid the fresh wreath upon the mound, she carefully removed the faded flowers of the day before, and a thought of his own mother stirred Adrian’s heart.
“I wish I could send a bunch of such blossoms to my mother!”
“How can you live without her, since she is still alive?”
His face hardened again.
“You forget. I told you that she, too, turned against me at the last. It was a case of husband or son, and she made her choice.”