Sunday! How would he ever get through the hours? Go to church? No! Never at the best of times did he love the inside of a chapel, and now that it suggested a vision of a dead woman and flowers could he go?
Should he tell Mrs. Gwinn of his wife’s death?
What mattered it to her? She was now planning to marry her daughter to a millionaire. Let Gwendoline know? Not yet! Oh! not yet! But let him win this race—then, then the whole world might know, and Cassandra do her worst! What was it that at times blanched his cheek as he thought of her—“she who inflames with love?” Did he deem her a dangerous woman? Perhaps. But what about that other—“Kitty who laughs?”
Gwendoline sat before her glass, that morning, in a blue wrapper, with her hair down. Alice Legare, her maid, stood behind her and softly brushed out its silken waves. It was beautiful hair, but not long—falling only a little below her shoulders, a few tapering coils going nearly to the waist. It grew so lovely upon that shapely head! It is not always the wealth of hair that is attractive. A great many women have that; but all along the brow, around the ear and back of the neck it went wandering away as if it were a wave of light. And then the color—rich red brown, the bronze you read about, the “sunset glow,” and all that you see in the “Cenci” pictures.
Alice kept brushing and toying with it; and, as she did so, she began to think, and at last forgot to brush. Her mistress glanced up.
“Crying again, Alice?”
“Yes,” murmured the girl. “How can I ever thank you?”
“You have thanked me, Alice, more than once, more than you know.”
“So little, so very little, Miss,” she said. “I would it were more.”