“Riverfield?” Millicent repeated the name, but in a strange voice. Anna stared a little.
“Yes. Why? Do you know any one here?”
“No.” The word trickled slowly, unwillingly, from Millicent.
“Lovely town, and there are some good places outside,” said Anna. “The Ostranders have one, and Jimson, the artist. But the native city, or whatever you call it, is adorable. It has that air of rewarded virtue which makes one ashamed of one’s life—”
“I wish”—Millicent still spoke remotely, as if out of a sleep—“I wish, Mr. Brockton, that we might find a little library and museum they have here.”
“Why, of course!”
“Are you going to compare it with the Vatican, Millicent?” asked Anna, flippantly. Millicent turned a distant, starry gaze upon her cousin.
“No,” she said; and then, in a flash of sympathy and fright, Anna remembered that it had been for some little Berkshire town that Will Hayter had built a library and museum just before his death, six years before—the town from which his family had originally come. Her memory worked rapidly, constructing the story. The blood dyed her face at the thought of her obtuseness. Then she set her lips firmly. She had done her best; if a wanton fate chose to interfere now and make Millicent slave to the phantom of her early, radiant love, she, Anna, could do no more!
“Here we are, I guess,” called Brockton. The machine shot into a broad street. A promenade between a double row of elms down its centre gave it a spacious dignity. The modest courthouse stood on one side, as green-bowered as if Justice were a smiling goddess; a few churches broke the stretch of houses. And on the other side the library and museum stood.
“Pretty little building, but plain,” commented Brockton, making disparaging note of its graceful severity.