IX.
Margaret stood before the cheval-glass in Lydia’s gown, smiling at the quaint reflection. It showed a figure with slim, pointed waist between billowy paniers, flounced with Spanish frill after the fashion of a decade before. The neck was square-cut and the tight sleeves reached to the elbow, ending in a fall of lace. It was not unbecoming to her. Her brown eyes had borrowed from the pearl tint a misty violet and the springing growth of her hair had taken on the shade of wet broom-straw. A faint glow rose in her cheeks as she surveyed her own stirring image. She clasped the close necklace of pearls about her throat. Poor Lydia! Something as fair she must have looked in that old time so rudely ended! Poor Melwin!
The wide dining-room doors stood open, and she did not pause, but went directly in. The old butler stood in the hall, and she noticed wonderingly that he gazed at her with a scared expression and moved backward, his arms stretched behind him in an instinctive gesture of fright which puzzled her. Were even the ancient servitors of the house as incomprehensible as was their master?
Melwin stood leaning against the polished rosewood sideboard, his unseeing gaze fixed on a glass-prismed candelabra of antique workmanship, whose pendants vibrated ceaselessly. His lifted stare, which went beyond, suddenly caught and fastened itself upon her in a look of startled fascination. His lean fingers gripped the edge of the wood and he stiffened all over like a wild animal couched to spring. His shrunken features were marked with a convulsion of fearful anguish. Margaret shrank back dismayed at the lambent fire that had leaped into his colorless eyes.
“Lydia!” The cry burst from his lips as he made a quick step toward her.
“Why, Melwin!” she gasped, “what is the matter?”
The table was between them, but she could see that he was shaking. His eyes turned from her to the opposite wall, then back again. Her gaze followed his and rested upon a splendid full-length portrait. She knew at once that it was Lydia. But she saw in that one instant more than this; she saw her own face, radiant, sparkling, the same lightened, straw-tinted hair, the same shadowy violet eyes, the same gown, pearl gray, quaintly cut, that had faced her in the depths of the cheval-glass.
“Melwin, don’t you know me? Why, it’s I—Margaret!”
His lips lifted from his teeth. Even through the strained agony of his face, she could have imagined him about to laugh. It seemed a minute before his voice came, and when it did it scourged her like a sting of a lash. She cringed under its livid fury.
“How dare you? How dare you come to me like that? Do you think a man is a stone? Do you think he has no feeling, that you can torture him like this? Do you think he never remembers or suffers? Is there nothing in his past that’s too sacred to lay hands upon?”