She told them, over the meal, of Mary and Katrina, in whom their interest was of a simple and amazed quality that Norma resented, and of Chris's prospect, which did awaken some comment from Mrs. Sheridan. They were a clever family, she said.
But now Wolf, bursting with long suppression, suddenly took the floor with his own great news. Voorhies, the fifty-year-old manager of the California plant, had been drifting about the Newark factory for several days, and Wolf had talked with him respectfully, as a man of twenty-five, whose income is three thousand a year, may talk to a six-thousand-dollar manager, and to-day Voorhies, and Jim Palmer, the Newark manager, and Paul Stromberg, the vice-president, had taken Wolf to lunch with them, apparently casually, apparently from mere friendliness. But Voorhies had asked him if he had ever seen the West; and Stromberg had said that he understood Sheridan's family consisted merely of a young wife, and Palmer had chanced to drop carelessly the fact that Mr. Voorhies was not going back to California——!
That was all. But it was enough to send Wolf back to his work with his head spinning. California—and a managership of a mine—and six thousand! It must be—it must be—that he had been mentioned for it, that they had him in mind! He wasn't going even to think of it—and Norma mustn't—but Lord, it meant being picked out of the ranks; it meant being handed a commission on a silver platter!
Norma tried not to be cold, tried to rise to the little he asked of her, as audience. And she had the satisfaction of knowing that he noticed nothing amiss in her manner, and of seeing him go off to sleep, when they had made the long trip home, with his head in a whirl of glorious hopes. But Norma, for the first time since her marriage, cried herself to sleep.
CHAPTER XXVII
The bitterness stayed with her, and gradually robbed her life of everything that was happy and content. Her little household round, that had been so absorbing and so important, became tedious and stupid. Rose, who was expecting her second confinement, had her husband's mother with her, and in care of the old baby, and making preparations for the new, was busy, and had small time for the old companionship; the evenings were too cold for motoring now, even if Wolf had not been completely buried in engineering journals and papers of all sorts.
Norma did not call on Annie again, but a fretted and outraged sense of Annie's coolness and aloofness, and a somewhat similar impression from Leslie's manner, when they met in Fifth Avenue one day, was always in her mind. They could drop her as easily as they had picked her up, these high-and-mighty Melroses! She consoled herself, for a few days, with spectacular fancies of Annie's consternation should Norma's real identity be suddenly revealed to her, but even that poor solace was taken away from her at last.
It was Aunt Kate's unconscious hand that struck the blow, on a wild afternoon, All Hallow E'en, as it happened, when the older woman made the long trip to see Rose, and came on to Norma with a report that everything was going well, and Miggs more fascinating than ever.