To nearly all these requirements Alice promised compliance, and then, as the carriage was waiting, she followed Frederic down to the gate, and soon both were lost to the sight of the tearful group which from the piazza of Redstone Hall, gazed wistfully after them.
It was at the close of a sultry Summer day when the travelers reached Riverside, where they found Mrs. Huntington waiting to receive them. Frederic had written, apprising her of the time when he should probably arrive, and asking her to be there if possible. Something, too, he had said of Isabel, but that young lady was not in the most amiable mood, and as she was comfortably domesticated with another distant relative, she declined going to Frederic until he came to some understanding, or at least manifested a greater desire to have her with him than his recent letters indicated. Accordingly her mother went alone, and Frederic was not sorry, while Alice was delighted. Everything seemed so bright and airy, she said, just as though a load were taken from them, and like a bird she flitted about the house, for she needed to pass through a room but once ere she was familiar with its location, and could find it easily. With her own cozy chamber she was especially pleased, and in less than half an hour her little hands had examined every article of furniture, even to the vases which held the withered blossoms gathered so long ago.
“Somebody must have put these here for me,” she said, and then her mind went back to the morning when she, too, had gathered flowers for her expected friend, and she wondered much who had done a similar service for her.
“It’s me,” returned Mrs. Russell, who was still staying at Riverside. “How I wonder if you found them dried-up things so soon,” she continued, advancing into room. “I should of hove them out, only that the girl who fixed ’em made me promise to leave ’em till you came. ’Pears like she b’lieved you’d think more on ’em for knowin’ that she picked ’em.”
“Girl! Mrs. Russell. What girl?” and Alice’s eyes lighted up, for she thought at once of Marian, who would know of course about the house, and as she would naturally wish to see it, she had come some day and left these flowers, which would be so dear to her if she found her suspicions correct. “Who was the girl?” she asked again, and Mrs. Russell replied:
“I don’t remember her name, but she went all over the house, fixing things in Mr. Raymond’s room, which I didn’t think was very marnerly, bein’ that ’twa’n’t none o’ hern. Then she come in here and set ever so long before she picked these posys, which she told me not to throw away.”
“Yes, it was Marian,” came involuntarily from Alice’s lips, while the woman, catching at the name rejoined:
“That sounds like what he called her—that tall spooky chap, her brother—Ben something. She said he had seen you at the South.”
“Oh, Ben Butterworth. It was his adopted sister;” and Alice turned away, feeling greatly disappointed that Marian Grey, and not Marian Lindsey, had arranged those flowers for her.
This allusion to Ben reminded Alice of his request for her picture, and one morning, when Frederic was going to New York, she asked to go with him and sit for her daguerreotype. There was no reason why she should not, and in an hour or two, she was listening, half stunned, to the noise and uproar of the city.