It was a delightful day for driving; and after breakfast was over, Alice asked for the carriage and took Magdalen to all her favorite resorts, down by the river and up among the hills, where she said she often went and sat for hours alone. They were firmer friends than ever before that drive was over, and Alice had dropped “Miss Lennox” for the more familiar “Magdalen,” and had asked that she should be simply “Alice,” and not that formal “Miss Grey.”
That afternoon Magdalen wrote a short letter to Hester Floyd, telling her where she was, explaining how she chanced to be there, and going into ecstasies over the loveliness and beauty of Alice Grey, but never hinting at Mr. Grey’s identity with the man who had tempted Jessie to sin. It was as well to keep that to herself, she thought, inasmuch as the telling it would only awaken bitter memories in Rogers heart. Once she determined not to speak of Roger at all, but that would be too marked a neglect, and so she asked to be remembered to him, and said she should never forget his kindness to her, or cease to regret the meddlesome curiosity which had resulted so disastrously for him. She made no mention of either Mrs. Walter Scott or Frank. She merely said she left Millbank at such a time, and expressed herself as glad to get away, it seemed so changed from the happy home it used to be in other days.
“Mrs. Hester Floyd. Care of Roger Irving, Esq., Schodick, N. H.,” was the direction of the letter which Magdalen gave to Mr. Grey, who was going to the post-office and offered to take it for her. Very narrowly she watched him as he glanced at the superscription, and she half pitied him when she saw his lips quiver and turn pale for a moment as he read the name of a place which he remembered so well. Once in his life he had sent letters to that very town, and the Schodick post-mark was not an unfamiliar one to him. Now she to whom he had written was dead, and he held a letter directed to the care of her son. How he longed to ask something concerning him, and finally he did so, saying in a half indifferent tone, “Schodick?—I once spent a summer there, and I have heard of Mr. Irving. Does he live in the village?”
“No, sir, he lives at his mother’s old home. They call it the Morton farm. Did you know his mother, Jessie Morton?”
Magdalen put the question purposely, but regretted it when she saw the look of intense pain which flitted across Mr. Grey’s face.
“I knew her, yes. She was the most beautiful woman I ever saw,” he replied, and then he turned away and walked slowly from the room with his head bent down, as if his thoughts were busy with the past.
The days succeeding that first one at Beechwood went rapidly by, and each one found Magdalen happier and more contented with her situation as companion of Alice, who strove in so many ways to make her feel that she was in all respects her equal, instead of a person hired to minister to her. Indeed, the hired part seemed only nominal, for nothing was ever required of Magdalen which would not have been required of her had she been a daughter of the house and Alice her invalid sister. They rode together, and walked together, and read together, and slept together at last, for Alice would have it so, and every morning of her life Magdalen was awakened by the soft touch of Alice’s hand upon her cheek, and the kiss upon her brow.
To Magdalen this was a new and blissful experience. At Millbank she had always been alone, so far as girls of her own age were concerned, and Alice Grey seemed to her the embodiment of all that was pure and beautiful, and she loved her with a devotion that sometimes startled herself with its intenseness. The mystery, if there was one, was very quiet now, and though Alice went often down the hall and through the green baize door, she never looked as sad and tired when she came back as she had done on that first day at Beechwood. Mr. Grey, too, frequently passed the entire evening with the young girls in the parlor, where Magdalen, who was a very fine reader, read to them aloud from Alice’s favorite authors. But after the first night she was never asked to sing. Alice often requested her to play, and they had learned a few duets which they practised together, but songs were never mentioned, and Magdalen would have fancied that there was something disagreeable in her voice were it not that when alone with Alice among the hills and down by the river, whither they often went, her companion always insisted upon her singing, and would sit listening to her as if spellbound by the clear, liquid tones.
At last there came a letter from Hester Floyd, who, in her characteristic way, expressed herself as pleased that Magdalen “had grit enough to cut loose from the whole coboodle at Millbank, and go to do for herself. I was some taken aback,” she wrote, “for I s’posed by the tell that you was to marry that pimpin, white-faced Frank, and I must say you showed your good sense by quittin’ him, and doin’ for yourself. Me and Roger would have been glad for you to come here; that is, I b’leeve Roger would, though he never sed nothin’ particklar. He’s some altered, and don’t talk so much, nor ’pear so chipper as he used to do, and I mistrust he misses you more’n he does his money. He’s a good deal looked up to, both in the town and in the church, where they’ve made him a vestryman in place of a man who died, and ’twould seem as if he’d met with a change, though he allus was a good man, with no bad habits; but he’s different like now, and don’t read newspapers Sunday, nor let me get up an extra dinner, and he has family prayers, which is all well enuff, only bakin’ mornins it does hender some.”
Then followed a description of the house and Schodick generally, and then a break of two days or more, after which the old lady resumed her pen, and added: “Roger’s got a letter from Frank, askin’ if he knew where you was. He said you left while he was away unbeknownst to him, and had never writ a word, by which I take it you and he ain’t on the fust ratest terms. Roger talked the most that day that he has in a month, and actually whistled, but then he’d just gained a suit, and so mabby it was that, though I b’leeve it wouldn’t do no harm if you were to drop him a line in a friendly way. It’s leap year, you know.”