She rode along in the car, starting as every person entered it, fearing lest Carl Bernicci’s unwelcome face should present itself; but although he was near the factory she had left, his thirst had driven him into a barroom just at the moment that she appeared upon the street, so he missed her, and while she was on her way to Fifth Avenue he was watching the factory and cursing at her delay in coming forth, for Belva had advised him that Fair’s place had been filled, and he could not imagine what had detained her so long.
“I’ll make my lady pay for all I’ve endured since I married her, if ever I get her into my clutches!” he muttered fiercely.
But “my lady” at that moment was standing with wet eyes and bated breath in a house furnished with palatial magnificence, beside the white velvet casket that held the body of a beautiful young girl of about her own age—a lovely marble mask that, strangely enough, resembled Fair in a high degree, for the beautiful hair lying in loose curls upon the fragrant pillow of white flowers was the same shade of bright-red gold, and the face and features had so subtle a likeness that the neat maid who had been sent to show Fair the necessary alterations she was to make started, and exclaimed:
“Gracious, miss, you look very much like poor Miss Azalia did when she was alive.”
Fair scarcely noticed the words. She was threading her needle through tears that dimmed her sight, and when the maid went out to call her mistress, the dead girl’s mother, she bent over the girl, and sobbed forlornly:
“Oh, you beautiful angel! I wish that Heaven had taken me, instead of you, for you had father, mother, home, and friends, while I am an unhappy orphan, without a friend and without a home.”
In her agitation, she did not notice that the door had opened noiselessly, admitting a handsome, pale-faced, elderly woman, dressed in deep, rich black. She paused and listened in amazement to the mournful plaint of the girl who had come from the factory to arrange her daughter’s burial robe.
Believing herself quite alone, Fair continued, half deliriously:
“How beautiful you are, sweet one! Many must have loved you in your short, happy life; but I have no one to love me while I live, nor to grieve for me when I die. I, who have no more tears left to shed for my own misery, cannot help weeping for you. I love you!”
And her tears rained among the white roses and lay glittering upon them like dew.