Up-stairs we went, in this stately mansion—up and up, until suddenly we were ushered into the most charming room that my eyes had ever beheld, with a quaintly-shaped bow-window hung out, so that one could see between the long, long rows of roofs—it made me think of looking through our old spy-glass—a beautiful blue glimpse of river—which actually brought the tears to my eyes, as if I had been away from our river for a twelvemonth. But it was not at the first moment that I saw the beauty of the room or the lovely river vista.
Estelle was lying on a couch covered with a leopard skin, over which her pretty yellow hair hung disheveled. Her eyelids were red, and her face blotched from weeping. Not even in her childhood, not even in the period when she did undeniably “make faces,” had I ever seen our delicately-reticent and self-contained Estelle in such a condition of frank overthrow as this.
She sprang up, and then, as if the sight of us were an additional humiliation, she sank back again and covered her face with her hands.
“Where—where in the world did you come from?” she gasped. “Oh, there are such perfectly dreadful people in Boston! I want to get home to Palmyra—and yet I can’t go, I can’t until I’ve shown my drawings to another dreadful editor; it’s a woman, too—that will be even worse!”
“Estelle, dearie, I know all about it!” Octavia knelt beside the couch and clasped the slender figure in her arms.
Estelle withdrew her hands from her face, and stared at her, round-eyed, like a child.
“You? You couldn’t possibly know anything about it!” she said, with a thrill of astonishment in her tone.
I had wondered sometimes if she had never guessed at Octavia’s literary ventures, since she had so often brought the dreadful packages home in the mail. It was evident, now, that she never had. Perhaps that was not strange, since she was a child when Octavia began to write, and her bump of curiosity had never been large.
“I—I rather think you would believe that I know about it, if I should tell you what I’ve been through this very day!” said Octavia, and sat down flat upon the floor.
Estelle sat up. And she looked at Octavia as if she were seeing her for the first time in her life, as, indeed, in a certain sense I think she was. I will admit that I was not altogether acquainted with Octavia in this mood myself.