Regina, coming in a little later, saw that Mrs. Sheridan had been crying, and reproached her with the affectionate familiarity of an old servitor.
"You that were always so light-hearted, Miss, it don't seem right for you to grieve so!" said Regina, a little tearful herself. Norma smiled, and wiped her eyes.
"This is a nice beginning," the girl told herself, as she bathed and dressed for the evening ordeal of calls, and messages, and solemn visits to the chamber of death, "this is a nice beginning for a woman who knows that the man she loves is free to marry her, and who has just fallen heir to a great fortune!"
CHAPTER XXXIII
The evening moved through its dark and sombre hours unchanged; Joseph's assistants opened and opened and opened the door. More flowers—more flowers—and more. Notes, telephone messages, black-clad callers murmuring in the dimness of the lower hall, maids coming noiselessly and deferentially, the clergyman, the doctor, the choir-master, old Judge Lee tremulous and tedious, all her world circled about the lifeless form of the old mistress of the house. Certain persons went quietly upstairs, women in rich furs, and bare-headed, uncomfortable-looking men, entered the front room, and passed through with serious faces and slowly shaking heads.
Chris spoke to Norma in the hall, just after she had said good-night to some rather important callers, assuring them that Annie and Leslie were well, and had been kissed herself as their representative. He extended her a crushed document in which she was alarmed to recognize Wolf's letter.
"Oh—I think I dropped that in Aunt Annie's dressing-room!" Norma said, turning scarlet, and wondering what eyes had seen it.
"There was no envelope; a maid brought it to her, and Annie read it," Chris said. Norma's eyes were racing through it.