“Yes, Miss,” said Johannah, coming into the room and depositing a gown on which she had been working, on the back of a chair. “It’s that postman,” she said, as she fastened her needle to the bosom of her dress. “And such a one as he is, thinking that people must fly when he so much as touches the bell, and going off a writing of ‘no answer to bell,’ and me with my hand on the very door-knob.”
“I notice that always happens when I’m out, Johannah; he’s ringing again.”
It was Thérèse’s letter, and as Melicent turned it about and looked critically at the neatly written address, it was not without a hope that the reading of it might furnish her a moment’s diversion. She did not faint. The letter did not “fall from her nerveless clasp.” She rather held it very steadily. But she grew a shade paler and looked long into the fire. When she had read it three times she folded it slowly and carefully and locked it away in her desk.
“Yes, Miss; and all the beautiful passmantry that you bought?”
“It makes no difference, I shan’t use it. What’s become of that black camel’s-hair that Mrs. Gauche spoiled so last winter?”
“It’s laid away, Miss, the same in the cedar chest as the day it came home from her hands and no more fit, that I’d be a shame meself and no claims to a dress-maker. And there’s many a lady that she never would have seen a cent, let alone making herself pay for the spiling of it.”
“Well, well, Johannah, never mind. Get it out, we’ll see what can be done with it. I’ve had some painful news, and I shall wear mourning for a long, long time.”
“Oh, Miss, it’s not Mr. David! nor yet one of those sweet relations in Utica? leastways not I hope that beautiful Miss Gertrude, with such hair as I never see for the goldness of it and not dyed, except me cousin that’s a nun, that her mother actually cried when it was cut off?”
There were a few social engagements to be cancelled; and regrets to be sent out, which she attended to immediately. Then she turned again to look long into the fire. That crime for which she had scorned him, was wiped out now by expiation. For a long time--how long she could not yet determine--she would wrap herself in garb of mourning and move about in sorrowing--giving evasive answer to the curious who questioned her. Now might she live again through those summer months with Grégoire--those golden afternoons in the pine woods--whose aroma even now came back to her. She might look again into his loving brown eyes; feel beneath her touch the softness of his curls. She recalled a day when he had said, “Neva to see you--my God!” and how he had trembled. She recalled--strangely enough and for the first time--that one kiss, and a little tremor brought the hot color to her cheek.
