—Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
From Genoa there came a note to Marion:—
“Dear friend Marion:
To-day’s mail brings me saddest and most unexpected news. I believed my Aunt Hilda would live years; I would not have left her had I thought she would be taken so soon. She died in Summer Avenue before she could be taken to Bensalem. Judith has written herself, the bravest child’s letter. She is in Bensalem with two old aunts of her mother.
Roger hopes to have you for his housekeeper; you will be near Judith; will you take her under your wing? Her mother especially wished her not to go to boarding-school. She has always been a child of promise; she may fizzle out as promising children do and become only an ordinary girl; but she will always be sweet and brave, which is better than being brilliant. One sweet woman is worth a thousand brilliant ones; that is the reason there are so many more sweet ones. I would change my plans and return for her sake, but what can a bachelor cousin do for her? She will be sheltered from harmful influences in Bensalem. She will write me regularly. I have written to Roger about her money affairs.
Your friend,
Don.”
In reply Marion wrote the briefest note:—
“Dear friend Don:
I will do my best for Judith.
Yours truly,
Marion.”
“It will be the best thing in the world for Marion,” replied the voice of Marion’s mother.
“There is no best thing in the world for Marion,” Marion told herself wearily, rising from the back parlor sofa, where she had thrown herself to be alone, and stepping softly across the room to the door.
To be alone in the dark was the best thing in the world for her; to be alone in the dark forever. For something had happened to her that had never happened to any girl before. With a light tread she went up stairs: she would not have her mother know that she had overheard the remark made to her father—her mother could not know all, only herself and Don Mackenzie knew her cruel secret; he would never tell, not even Roger, and she could sooner die than let the words pass her lips to any human creature. Girls had gone through terrible things before; but no girl ever had gone through this; no girl could, unless she were like herself, and no girl was like herself, so impetuous, so headlong, so frank that frankness became a sin.
In her own chamber she found the darkness and solitude she craved; the darkness and solitude she thought she would crave forever. The voices in the front parlor went on low and steadily, planning a best thing for Marion for whom no best was possible.