The needles ceased to contend and the work slipped from the smooth little hands. A frightened look overspread the gentle face.
"Who is it speaks? Sometime I must have known that voice."
"It is Marion Evan." The visitor bent her head upon her own arms and gave way to her emotion. Mrs. Montjoy had repeated the name unconsciously and was silent. But presently, feeling the figure bent before her struggling in the grasp of its emotion, she placed both hands upon the shapely head and gently stroked its beautiful hair, now lined with silver.
"You have suffered," she said simply. "Why did you leave us? Why have you been silent all these years?"
"For my father's sake. They have thought me cold, heartless, abandoned. I have crucified my heart to save his." She spoke with vehement passion.
"Hush, my child," said the elder lady; "you must calm yourself. Tell me all; let me help you. You used to tell me all your troubles and I used to call you daughter in the old times. Do you remember?"
"Ah, madame, if I did not I would not be here now. Indeed you were always kind and good to Marion."
And so, living over the old days, they came to learn again each other's heart and find how little time and the incidents of life had changed them. And sitting there beneath the sympathetic touch and eyes of her lifetime friend, Cambia told her story.
"I was not quite 17, madame, you remember, when it happened. How, I do not know; but I thought then I must have been born for Gaspard Levigne. From the moment I saw him, the violin instructor in our institution, I loved him. His voice, his music, his presence, without effort of his, deprived me of any resisting power; I did not seek to resist. I advanced in my art until its perfection charmed him. I had often seen him watching me with a sad and pensive air and he once told me that my face recalled a very dear friend, long dead. I sang a solo in a concert; he led the orchestra; I sang to him. The audience thought it was the debutante watching her director, but it was a girl of 17 singing to the only man the world held for her. He heard and knew.
"From that day we loved; before, only I loved. He was more than double my age, a handsome man, with a divine art; and I—well, they called me pretty—made him love me. We met at every opportunity, and when opportunities did not offer we made them, those innocent, happy trysts.