“You seem very happy this morning,” said Frederic, smiling down upon the happy child.
“I am,” she replied. “I’m most as happy as I should be if we had found Marian yesterday. Wouldn’t it be splendid if this were really Marian, and wouldn’t you be glad?”
Frederic Raymond did not say yes—he did not say anything; but as he looked at the figure in white presiding a second time so gracefully at his table, he fancied that it would not be a hard matter for any man to be glad if Marian Grey were his wife. Breakfast being over, Alice assumed the responsibility of showing her teacher the place.
“You were here once, I know,” she said, “and left me those flowers, but you hadn’t time then to see half. There’s a tree down in the garden, where Frederic’s name is cut in the bark, and Marian Lindsey’s, too. You must see that;” and she led her off to the spot where John had seen her crying the day before. “I ain’t going to study a bit for ever so long. Frederic says I needn’t,” said Alice. “I’m going to have a right nice time with you.” And Marian was not sorry, for nothing could please her better than rambling with Alice over what was once her home.
Very rapidly the first few days passed away, and ere a week had gone by, Marian understood tolerably well the place which Marian Lindsey occupied in her husband’s affections, and she needed not the letter received from William Gordon to tell her that the Frederic Raymond of to-day was not the same from whose presence she had once fled with a breaking heart. He was greatly changed, and if she had loved him in the early days of her girlhood, her heart clung to him now with an affection tenfold stronger than she had ever known before. From Alice, who was very communicative, she learned many things of which she little dreamed, when in New York she was hiding from her husband, and believing that he hated her. Alice liked nothing better than to talk of Marian, and one afternoon, when Frederic was in New York, and the two girls were sitting together in their pleasant chamber, she told her sad story in her own childish way, accepting her companion’s tears, which fell like rain as tokens of sympathy for the lost one.
“Frederic cried just like he was a woman,” she said, “when he came up from the river, cold, and wet, and sick, and told us they could not find her. I remember, too, how he groaned when I asked him what made her kill herself; she didn’t, though,” she added quickly, as she heard Marian’s exclamation of horror at the very idea; “she wasn’t even dead, but we thought she was, and we mourned for her so much. The house was like a funeral all the time till Isabel came.”
“And how was it then?” Marian asked.
Alice did not reply immediately, and as Marian saw the shadow which flitted over her face, she pressed her hands together nervously, for she fancied that she knew what Redstone Hall was like when Isabel, her rival, came.
“You were telling me about the house after Miss Huntington’s arrival,” she rejoined, as Alice showed no signs of continuing the conversation, but sat with her eyes fixed upon the floor as if she were thinking of something far back in the past.
At Marian’s remark she started, and with the same dreamy, perplexed look upon her face, replied: