When once fairly seated, Magdalen had leisure to study her vis-à-vis more closely. He was apparently twenty-five or twenty-six years of age, a young man who had seen a great deal of fashion and society, and who still retained about him a certain air of frankness and candor and simplicity, which opened a way for him at once to every stranger’s heart. There was something in the wave of his hair and the cast of his head which reminded Magdalen of Roger, and made her feel as if she had found a friend. He was inclined to be quite sociable, and after exhausting the weather, he said to her, “You are from Belvidere, I believe? Do you know a Mr. Irving there, the one who has so recently come into a fortune?”
Magdalen looked quickly up, and her face was scarlet as she replied, “I know him, yes. Is he an acquaintance of yours?”
“I was two years behind him in college, but sophs and seniors are as widely apart as the poles. I wonder if he is greatly improved. I used to think him a kind of a prig.”
“I may as well start with a right understanding at once,” Magdalen thought, and she answered a little haughtily. “Mr. Frank Irving is a friend of mine. I have known him ever since I can remember. Millbank is the only home I have ever had.”
Magdalen thought her companion came near whistling in his surprise, and she felt sure that he was regarding her more curiously than he had done before, while for some reason he seemed more attentive and polite, and by the time the St. Denis was reached, she felt as if she had known him months instead of a brief half hour.
“You must not mind if you find Aunt Pen a little stiff at first. She has a great deal of starch in her composition,” he said as he ran up the stairs and down the hall in the direction of No.——.
And stiff, indeed, Magdalen did find Aunt Pen, as the nephew called her. A little, short, straight, square-backed woman of sixty or thereabouts, with iron-gray hair, arranged in puffs around her forehead,—a proud, haughty, wrinkled face, and round bright eyes, which seemed to look straight through Magdalen as Guy ushered her into the room.
“Miss Lennox, Auntie Pen,” he said, and taking Magdalen by the arm he led her up to his aunt, who felt constrained to offer her jewelled hand, but who did it in such a way that Magdalen felt the conventional gulf there was between them in the lady’s mind, and winced under it.
“I hope you’ll order dinner at once,” Guy continued. “The train was an hour behind, and Miss Lennox is fearfully tired. I’ll ring myself,” and he touched the bell rope while Mrs. Seymour was saying something about being glad to see Miss Lennox, and hoping she was not very tired.
Oh how strange and lonely Magdalen felt, when at last she was alone in her room for a few moments, while she arranged her hair and made herself more presentable for dinner! The windows looked out into a dreary court, and tears sprang to Magdalen’s eyes as she felt the contrast between these dingy brick walls and that damp, mouldy pavement, and the fresh green grass and wealth of flowers and shrubbery and forest trees which for years had been hers to gaze upon. Suppose she was to live at the St. Denis for years, and to occupy that room into which the sun never penetrated. And for aught she knew, such was to be her fate. She had made no inquiries as to where she was to live, whether in city or country, hotel or private house. Her orders were to come to the St. Denis, and there she was, and her heart was aching with homesickness, and a longing to be away,—not at Millbank, but with Roger, wherever he was. With him was home and happiness and rest, such as Magdalen felt she should never find again. But it would not do now to indulge in feelings like these. There was dinner waiting for her, as Guy’s cheery voice announced outside her door. “Never mind stopping to dress to-night. It won’t pay, and Aunt Pen don’t expect it. She is dressed enough for both,” he said; then he went away, and Magdalen heard him whistling a part of a favorite opera, and felt glad and grateful that at the very outset of her career she had met Guy Seymour to smooth away the rough places for her as he was doing in more ways than she knew of, or ever would know. To him she owed it that she was not left to find her way alone from the depot to the hotel.