In New Brunswick she had managed to send a long wire, full of the disappointment and affection and longing she truly felt, and after that she had been happier. But it was a very subdued little Norma who had come quietly into Aunt Kate's kitchen three weeks later, and had relieved her over-charged heart with a burst of tears on Aunt Kate's shoulder.
Aunt Kate had been kind, kind as she always was to the adored foster-child. And Norma had stayed to dinner, and made soft and penitent eyes at Wolf until the agonized resolutions of the past lonely months had all melted out of his heart again, and they had all gone over to Rose's, for five minutes of kissing and crying, before the big car came to carry Norma away.
So the worst of that wound was healed, and life could become bright and promising to Norma once more. Autumn was an invigorating season, anyway, full of hope and enchantment, and Caroline Craigie, by what Norma felt to be a special providence, was visiting her grandmother in Baltimore for an indefinite term. The truth was that there was a doctor there whose advice was deemed valuable to Caroline, but Norma did not know that. Norma did not know the truth, either, about Mrs. von Behrens's sudden graciousness toward her, but it made her happy. Annie had become friendly and hospitable toward the newcomer in the family for only one reason. As a social dictator, she was accustomed to be courted and followed by scores of women who desired her friendship for the prestige it gave them. Annie was extremely autocratic in this respect, and could snub, chill, and ignore even the most hopeful aspirants to her favour, with the ease of long practice. It made no difference to Annie that dazzling credentials were produced, or that past obscurity was more than obliterated by present glory.
"One truly must be firm," Annie frequently said. "It devolves upon a few of us, as an actual duty, to see that society is maintained in its true spirit. Let the bars down once——!"
Norma, a negligible factor in Annie's life when she first appeared, had quite innocently become a problem during that first summer. While not a Melrose, she was a member of the Melrose family, making her home with one of the daughters of the house. Annie might ignore Norma, but there were plenty of women, and men, too, who saw in the girl a valuable social lever. To become intimate with little Miss Sheridan meant that one might go up to her, at teas and dinners, while she was with Mrs. Melrose, or young Mrs. Liggett, or even Mrs. von Behrens herself, in a casual, friendly manner that indicated, to a watching world, a comfortable footing with the family. Norma was consequently selected for social attention.
Annie saw this immediately, and when all the families were settled in town again, she decided to take Norma's social training in hand, as she had done Leslie's, and make sure that no undesirable cockle was sown among the family fields. She would have done exactly the same if Norma had been the least attractive of girls, but Norma fancied that her own qualities had won Annie's reluctant friendship, and was accordingly pleased.
CHAPTER XII
Eight months later, in the clear sunshine of a late autumn morning, a slender young woman came down the steps of the Melrose house, after an hour's call on the old mistress, and turned briskly toward Fifth Avenue. In figure, in carriage, and even in the expression of her charming and animated face, she was different from the girl who had come to that same house to make a call with Aunt Kate, on the day after the big blizzard, yet it was the same Norma Sheridan who nodded a refusal to the driver of the big motor-car that was waiting, and set off by herself for her walk.