“Yes, very, very much,” was Alice’s reply, “and it hurts me so to think we cannot find her. I thought we surely should to-day, for we went there, Frederic and I—went where she used to live, and she wasn’t there. ’Twas a dreary place, and Frederic groaned out loud to think she ever lived there.”
“Perhaps it didn’t look so then,” suggested Marian, who felt constrained to say a word in favor of her former home.
“Oh, I know it didn’t,” returned Alice, “for Frederic has been by there, though he didn’t know it then, and he says it looked real nice, with the white curtain and the kitten asleep on the window sill. It’s a cat now, and we brought it home.”
“Her cat?” and Marian started eagerly.
“Yes,” said Alice, “Frederic gave three dollars for it,” and forgetting her late grief in this new interest, she told how they knew it was Marian’s, and then as Miss Grey expressed a wish to see it, she started in quest of it, just as Frederic appeared, telling them tea was ready.
“I am afraid you will think we keep Lent here all the year round,” he said, apologetically. “I was surprised to find that Mrs. Russell compelled you to fast until our return.”
“It didn’t matter,” Marian replied; though she had wondered a little at the non-appearance of supper, for Mrs. Russell, intent upon her dress, had no idea of “makin’ two fusses,” and she kept her visitor waiting until the return of Frederic, saying, “the supper would taste all the better when it did come.”
Very willingly Marian followed Frederic to the dining room, where everything was indicative of elegance and wealth.
“Mrs. Jones used to sit here; and I now give the place to you,” said Frederic, motioning to the seat by the tea-tray, and himself sitting down opposite, with Alice upon his right.
Marian became her new position well, and so Frederic thought, as he saw how gracefully her snowy fingers handled the silver urn, and how much at home she seemed. There was a strange fascination about her as she sat there at the head of his table, with the bright bloom on her cheek, and the dewy lustre in her beautiful blue eyes, which occasionally wandered toward the figure opposite, but as often fell beneath the curious gaze which they encountered. Frederic could not forbear looking at her, even though he saw that it embarrassed her—she was so fresh, so fair, so modest—while there was about her an indescribable something which he could not define, for though a stranger, as he supposed, she seemed near to him—so near that he almost felt he had a right to pass his arm around her, and kiss the girlish lips which Will Gordon had likened to a rose-bud.