CHAPTER XXVIII
And then suddenly she was delighted to have a friendly little note from Alice, asking her to come to luncheon on a certain December Friday, as there was "a tiny bit of business" that she would like to discuss; Chris was away, she would be alone. Norma accepted with no more than ordinary politeness, and showed neither Wolf nor his mother any elation, but she felt a deep satisfaction in the renewed relationship.
On the appointed Friday, at one o'clock, she mounted the familiar steps of the Christopher Liggetts' house, and greeted the butler with a delighted sense of returning to her own. Alice was in the front room, before a wood fire; she greeted Norma with her old smile, and with an outstretched hand, but Norma was shocked to see how drawn and strangely aged the smile was, and how thin the hand!
The room had its old scent of violets, and its old ordered beauty and richness, but Norma was vaguely conscious, for the first time, of some new invalid quality of fussiness, of a pretty and superfluous cluttering that had not been characteristic of Alice's belongings a year ago. Alice, too, wore newly a certain stamp of frailty, her always pure high forehead had a faint transparency and shine that Norma did not remember, and the increasing accumulation of pillows and little bookcases and handsome stands about her suggested that her horizon was closing in, that her world was diminishing to this room, and this room alone.
The strange nurse who smilingly and noiselessly slipped away as Norma came in, was another vaguely disquieting hint of helplessness, but Norma knew better than to make any comment upon her impressions, and merely asked the usual casual questions, as she sat down near the couch.
"How are you, Aunt Alice? But you look splendidly!"
"I'm so well," said Alice, emphatically, with a sort of solemn thankfulness, "that I don't know myself! Whether it was saving myself the strain of moving to Newport last summer, or what, I don't know. But I haven't been so well for years!"
Norma's heart contracted with sudden pity. Alice had never employed these gallant falsehoods before. She had always been quite obviously happy and busy and even enviable, in her limited sphere. The girl chatted away with her naturally enough while the luncheon table was arranged between them and the fire, but she noticed that two nurses shifted the invalid into an upright position before the meal, and that Alice's face was white with exhaustion as she began to sip her bouillon.
They were alone, an hour later, playing with little boxed ices, when Alice suddenly revealed the object of the meeting. Norma had asked for Chris, who was, it appeared, absent on some matter of business for a few days, and it was in connection with the introduction of his name that Alice spoke.