She paused here, and Alice rejoined, “Mr. Irving? Millbank? Why, both are familiar names to me, and have been since I was a little girl at school in New Haven and knew Mr. Franklin Irving. And you,—why, yes,—” and Alice’s manner grew more and more excited, “you are the very Magdalen Frank used to tell me about and of whom I was sometimes jealous. You know Frank,” she continued, misconstruing the expression of Magdalen’s face.
“Yes, I know Frank,” Magdalen replied, “and I, too, have heard a great deal of you, and was jealous of you at one time, I believe.”
“You had no cause,” Alice replied, thinking of the “Piccola Sentinella,” rather than of New Haven; “I liked Mr. Irving very much as a boy, and when we met him abroad I was very glad to see him and rather encouraged his visits than otherwise, but father disliked him thoroughly, or seemed to, and treated him so cavalierly that I wondered he could come to us at all. But he did, and then father took me away, and I saw Mr. Irving no more till he called upon me in New York. I was sick then and did not go out, but I heard of a Miss Lennox who was with the Irvings and said to be very beautiful, and that was you.”
“I was with the Irvings,” Magdalen replied, and Alice continued: “I fancied, then, that Mr. Irving would eventually marry you and speculated a good deal upon the matter. It seems so funny that you are here! I do not understand it at all, or why you should leave Millbank. Mr. Frank Irving is the heir now, is he not?”
Magdalen hesitated a moment, and then thinking it better to do so, told briefly of her life at Millbank until that luckless day when she discovered the will.
“After that Roger went to Schodick,” she said, “and I—I might have stayed there, but I did not like Mrs. Irving’s manner towards me when she became the mistress, and I could not be dependent upon Frank, and so I came away.”
Alice knew that Magdalen was withholding something from her, and with a woman’s wit guessed that it concerned Frank; but she would not question her, and turned the conversation into another channel, and talked of the books she had read and the authors she liked best.
It was comparatively early when Magdalen went up to her room, a door of which communicated with Alice’s. This the latter desired should stand open.
“I like to feel that some one is near me when I wake in the night, as I often do,” Alice said, and then she added, “I shall be obliged to leave you for a time, but do you go straight to bed. I know you must be tired. I shall come in so softly that you will not hear me. Good-night.”
She kissed Magdalen and then went from the room and down the hall toward the door, which Magdalen had heard open and shut so many times. Magdalen was very tired, and was soon sleeping so soundly that she did not hear Alice when she came back, but she dreamed there were angels with her clad in white, and with a start she woke to find the moonlight streaming into her chamber, and making it so light that she could see distinctly the young girl in the adjoining room was kneeling by the bed, her hands clasped together and her upturned face bathed in the silvery light, which made it like the face of an angel. She was praying softly, and in the deep stillness of the night every whisper was audible to Magdalen, who heard her asking Heaven for strength to bear the burden patiently, and never to get tired and weary and wish it somewhere else. Then the nature of the prayer changed, and Magdalen knew that Alice was thanking Heaven for sending her to Beechwood. “And if anywhere in the world there are still living the friends she has never known, oh, Father, let her find them, especially her mother,—it is so terrible to have no mother.”