Lali was moving with a little touch of grandeur in her manner and a more than ordinary deliberation. She had had a moment of great weakness, and then there had come the reaction--carried almost too far by the force of the will. She was indeed straining herself too far. Four years of tension were culminating.
“See her now, Edward,” repeated Mrs. Lambert. “Yes, but if I’m not mistaken, my dear, she is doing so well that she’s going to pieces. She’s overstrung to-day. If it were you, you’d be in hysterics.”
“I believe you are right,” was the grave reply. “There will be an end to this comedy one way or another very soon.”
A moment afterwards they were in a carriage rolling away to Greyhope.
When Marion was about leaving with her husband for the railway station, she sought out Lali, and found her standing half hidden by the curtains of a window, looking out at little Richard, who was parading his pony up and down before the house. An unutterable sweetness looked out of Marion’s eyes. She had found, as it seemed to her, and as so many have believed until their lives’ end, the secret of existence. Lali saw the glistening joy, and responded to it, just as it was in her being to respond to every change of nature--that sensitiveness was in her as deep as being.
“You are very happy, dear?” she said to Marion. “You cannot think how happy, Lali. And I want to say that I feel sure that you will yet be as happy, even happier than I. Oh, it will come--it will come. And you have the boy now-so fine, so good.”
Lali looked out to where little Richard disported himself; her eyes shone, and she turned with a responsive but still sad smile to Marion. “Marion,” she said gently, “the other should have come before he came.” “Frank loves you, Lali.”
“Who knows? And then, oh, I cannot tell! How can one force one’s heart? No, no! One has to wait, and wait, even if the heart grows harder, and one gets hopeless.”
Marion kissed her on the cheek and smiled. “Some day soon the heart will open up, and then such a flood will pour out! See, Lali. I am going now, and our lives won’t run together so much again ever, perhaps. But I want to tell you now that your coming to us has done me a world of good--helped me to be a wiser girl; and I ought to be a better woman for it. Good-bye.”