“You’ve never been abroad?” Alice asked, after a moment, during which she had studied Magdalen closely.
“Never,” was the reply, and Alice continued:
“And I have been away seven years, and so it cannot be; but you do not seem a stranger, and I am so glad. I opposed your coming at first,—that is, I was opposed to having any one come just to entertain me, and when auntie wrote from New York that she had engaged a Miss Lennox, I saw you directly, some tall, lank, ugly woman, who wore glasses and would bore me terribly.”
“Do I come up to your ideal,” Magdalen asked, her heart warming more and more toward the young girl, who replied:
“You are seeking for a compliment, for of course you know just how beautiful and brilliant and sparkling you are; only that sudden turn of your head and flash of your eyes does bother me so. And you are young, too. As young as I am, I guess. I am twenty-one.”
“And I am nineteen,” Magdalen rejoined, while Alice exclaimed:
“Only nineteen! That is young to be doing for one’s self; young to come here, to care for me, in this house.”
She seemed to be talking in an absent kind of way, and her eyes, which were looking far off across the river, had in them a sad, sorry expression, as if to care for her, in that house, was a lot not to be envied. Turning suddenly to Magdalen, she asked: “Are you nervous, Miss Lennox?”
That was the fourth time this question had been put to Magdalen, who laughed a little hysterically as she replied:
“I never supposed I was, but fear I shall be if questioned again upon the subject. Your aunt asked me twice if I was nervous, and Mr. Guy Seymour once.”