Читать книгу Ribbons and Laces - Ruby Mildred Ayres - Страница 6

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Linda was fifteen when the crash came that flung her life into complete disorder and brought about her father’s death.

The great firm of Dawson and Welby, silk merchants, collapsed like a house of cards, and left nothing out of the ruin.

One day to all appearances it was still a wonderful and flourishing concern, and twenty-four hours later newsboys were running all over the city bawling their news through the cold November night.

“Great City failure. Failure of a famous house! All the news!”

And Thomas Dawson walked into his home late that night, a broken and beaten man.

His wife was waiting for him, furious and incredulous. She had heard a great deal that was true and a great deal more that was not true, and she rushed upon the stricken man with no thought for his grief and despair, demanding explanations.

He stood quite still, leaning against the doorway of the handsome drawing-room in which he had never felt happy or at home, looking at his wife as if he had never really seen her before.

“What does it mean?” she demanded hysterically. “Why don’t you speak? Why don’t you tell me the truth?” She clutched the lapels of his coat with her diamond-laden fingers, and poor Thomas Dawson looked down at those fingers with dull eyes before he answered.

“It means that I’m a ruined man. I’ve lost everything.”

He made no attempt to tell her the details, and she would not have understood or been interested if he had. He might have tried to defend himself; he might have blamed the war, or a dishonest partner, but in the face of her rage and bitterness it seemed futile.

She asked one last question.

“Does that mean that we give up everything? This house—the car? That I shall have to sell my diamonds?”

The ghost of a smile flitted across his face. So that was all she cared about; she had not one grain of pity for him who had seen his life’s work go down in the wreck, not one thought as to how she might help and comfort him.

“It means that we’ve got nothing,” he said.

Then the storm broke. In her fury she spoke many truths which she had been afraid to speak before. She told him that she had only married him for his money—that she had never loved him; she told him that he had always disgusted her—his manner, his voice, his way of bragging; she said that if it had not been for her mother she would have left him long ago; she said a thousand hard, cruel things which went with poor Thomas Dawson to his grave; and then, when he made his one broken appeal to her “Marion . . . and I loved you!” she laughed in his face and went out of the room, banging the door behind her.

And in the morning she had gone, with a heartless melodramatic note left behind her pinned to the quilt on her bed to say that she had left England with “the only man she had ever loved,” and that she hoped Thomas would do the decent thing and divorce her as soon as possible.

There was no mention of her mother, or of Linda; but she had been careful to take all her diamonds with her and anything else that was of value.

Thomas and Mrs. Lovelace read the letter together, and Thomas laughed, such a dreadful brokenhearted laugh that the old lady lifted her trembling arms and put them round the neck of this self-made man who had lost everything at one cruel blow, and said in her sweet voice, “Oh, my dear, my poor dear——” and for a moment they clung together, and both cried, regardless that one had the blue blood of centuries in her veins and that the other was the son of a small tallow merchant who had struggled to make both ends meet in half a shop off the Mile End road; and then Thomas went down to the grand library, where stood rows and rows of books which had never been opened or read, and an hour later one of the servants found him lying unconscious on the floor, his wife’s letter still clasped in his locked hand.

And two days later he died without opening his eyes or speaking again, and that was the end of him.

The family lawyer came round and had a long consultation with Mrs. Lovelace, and after the perusal of many papers and documents it became apparent that, when the business was finally wound up and settled, there would be, perhaps, a hundred a year out of the ruin for Linda, and that was all.

Mrs. Lovelace lifted a lace handkerchief to her lips to hide their trembling.

“I have about a hundred a year of my own,” she said faintly. “So perhaps we can manage together——”

The lawyer shook his head; things were very expensive, he murmured in distress; living even in the humblest way it would be difficult, most difficult. He looked up and saw the tears on the old lady’s cheeks, and he put out his hand and took hers in a kindly clasp.

“Things may be better, who knows?” he said. “Later on it may be possible to make some arrangement with the creditors.”

Mrs. Lovelace shook her head; she had no hope left, but she thanked him for his kindness and asked him to come and see her again; then she wiped all traces of tears away, and went upstairs to Linda.

She found the girl curled up on a wide window-seat in her grandmother’s bedroom, looking out into the garden, where rain dripped from the trees and shrubs, and lay in little puddles on the well-kept drive.

She looked pale and grave, but she roused herself when Mrs. Lovelace went to her. “Well, darling? What does he say?”

Mrs. Lovelace tried to smile.

“Things are not very good, Linda.”

Linda kissed the old lady’s soft cheek, and for a moment there was silence, then: “Do you think my mother will come back?” the girl asked in a strangely hard voice.

Mrs. Lovelace did not answer.

“I hope she doesn’t,” Linda went on, fiercely. “I hope I never see her again.”

“My darling, you should not say that.”

Linda’s pale face flamed.

“I shall say it,” she said vehemently. “I never want to see her again. She killed Daddy . . . if she’d only been kind to him——” She could not go on, her voice broke, for Linda had loved her father; in spite of his braggart ways and lack of education she had loved him whole-heartedly.

Mrs. Lovelace stroked her bent head with a gentle hand, and presently the girl looked up again, her eyes wet, but resolute.

“How poor shall we be?” she asked.

“Very poor, I am afraid. We shall only have about £200 a year between us, and that is very little nowadays.” Mrs. Lovelace hesitated, then asked: “What are you thinking about, darling?”

Linda scrambled down from the window-seat; she stretched her arms above her head with a gesture of freedom, as if some intolerable burden had suddenly fallen from her shoulders.

“I am thinking,” said Linda triumphantly, “that at last I can do what I’ve always longed to do. I can go into a shop.”

“Go into a shop?” Mrs. Lovelace repeated her granddaughter’s words as if they held no meaning for her. “Go into a shop? What shop? And why?” she asked perplexed.

Linda laughed; she looked flushed and excited.

“To work, of course, darling,” she explained. “To learn the business. I shall have to work! We can’t live on two hundred a year—at least, we can’t live on it and be happy, either of us! Besides, I must do something or I can’t exist. Oh, Grannie, don’t look so shocked.”

Mrs. Lovelace sat down weakly in the nearest chair.

“You don’t know what you are talking about, Linda,” she said firmly. “You’re over-excited. You had better go and lie down, and I will bring you some sal-volatile.”

Linda laughed.

“Darling, don’t be silly. I know quite well what I’m talking about, and my mind has been made up for . . . oh, ages! Long before all . . . this happened. Mother always said that I had Daddy’s commercial instinct. Well, perhaps she was right! Anyway, I’m going into business. I’m not ashamed of being in a shop. I heard somebody say only the other day that all the money is in trade nowadays. Why, it was the vicar who said that if he had a dozen boys they should all go into trade—no more professions for him! Oh, Grannie, you know he did.”

Mrs. Lovelace passed her handkerchief agitatedly across her eyes.

“The vicar has no sons, Linda,” she said faintly. “If he had he would not have said anything so foolish. My dear child, let me beg of you to put this—this absurd idea out of your head. Why, let me see, how old are you—only fifteen?”

“Sixteen. I’m seventeen in March,” said Linda firmly.

“It’s a child—a mere baby,” her grandmother wailed.

Linda knelt down beside her, and looked up into her face.

“Don’t be a ridiculous darling,” she said severely. “To do any good in the world one has to start young! Think what I’ve got to learn!” She clasped her hands earnestly. “Oh, I’m glad I’m not any older—it gives me such a lot of time.”

She sat back on her heels and stared before her with earnest eyes.

“I’ve thought it all out,” she announced. “I shall change my name for yours. I shall call myself Linda Lovelace! It’s such a suitable name, don’t you think, Grannie? Because, of course, I shall go into a draper’s shop. I’ve always meant to—ever since the days when I played with your ribbon box, it’s been in my mind that some day I would go into a real shop and serve real people with real yards of lovely lace and ribbons!” She sprang to her feet excitedly.

“Grannie! Do you remember that little old song you taught me when I was quite tiny:

“Ladies with blue eyes, and ladies with true eyes—

Listen, oh list to my cry—

Ribbons and laces for sweet pretty faces;

Oh! come to the market and buy.”

Mrs. Lovelace burst into tears.

“And I am to blame for it all,” she sobbed. “Linda, you will break my heart.”

Linda stood very erect, her eyes shining.

“No, I shall make you proud of me,” she said confidently.

She looked so young, and yet somehow so capable as she stood there, her slim young body drawn up to its full height, her hands clenched determinedly.

“So, like her father,” Mrs. Dawson would have wailed if she had been there. “He was always a pig-headed, obstinate man. I never could do anything with him.”

She could have twisted the poor man round her little finger at one time, if she had ever troubled sufficiently to try; it was only afterwards, when he realised the tragedy of his marriage, that he had grown hard and obstinate.

So there was another consultation between Mrs. Lovelace and the family lawyer, whose name was Stern, a name which to Mrs. Lovelace appeared strangely unsuitable, seeing that he immediately agreed with Linda that it would be a splendid thing for her to find some occupation, and promised to make inquiries for her.

“I should have liked to live in,” Linda told him excitedly, “only, of course, there’s Grannie—and I can’t leave her.”

“Of course not—exactly,” Mr. Stern agreed, and looked with admiration at this determined young person who had so easily brought him round to her point of view. Only sixteen, he was thinking! She might have been nineteen, at least.

“I don’t know where you have found out so much about the shops,” Mrs. Lovelace complained when he had gone. “Did you read it in a book?”

“Mary had a sister in Lorne and Dodwell’s,” Linda explained coolly, “and she told me all about it. She was in hosiery.”

Mary was a parlour-maid whom Mrs. Dawson had dismissed in a fit of temper and had regretted doing so ever after.

“Hosiery!” said Mrs. Lovelace, faintly.

“Yes,” Linda nodded. She had long since made up her mind that the best and only way to manage her grandmother, and overrule her objections, would be to ignore them. “She sold lovely silk stockings, Grannie, with open-work clocks as fine as a spider’s web—something like the old lace in your ribbon box; such beautiful work,” she added almost reverently.

Mrs. Lovelace produced her smelling-salts; in her heart she was enormously proud of her granddaughter’s pluck and determination, but in her young days it had always been the correct thing to show signs of faintness at any ultra-modern idea, and she could not as yet quite free herself of old customs and habits.

Finding she was unobserved, however, she put the stopper back into the smelling-bottle and sighed resignedly.

“I thought you were going for a walk,” she said, after a moment. “It’s nice and sunny, and we get so little sunshine.”

Linda glanced towards the window.

“I’ll go now,” she said. She put on her hat and walked down the road, thinking of the future all the time, and stopping every few yards to look in at a shop window.

She and Mrs. Lovelace were still living in the big house in Kensington which Thomas Dawson had bought and redecorated with such pride, because for the present nothing had been decided, and the affairs of the business were still unsettled.

“It will be a cruel wrench having to leave,” Mrs. Lovelace said often, but Linda did not think so. She had very few happy memories of the house, and a great many unhappy ones. She thought it would be delightful to start life all over again and try and forget the past.

“Except Daddy,” so she told herself tremulously. “I could never forget him, whatever happened.”

Her thoughts were full of him as she walked along; she had never realised until his death how tragic his life must have been.

As a child she had only known him as a kind man with a red face and a loud voice, who laughed a great deal, but lately, from little things she had heard and discovered for herself, she knew that his laughter must very often have rung hollow, and that he could never really have been happy at all. Tears swam into her eyes, blinding her as she turned to cross the road, so that she hardly saw where she was going, or realised that a high-powered car was bearing swiftly down upon her till she felt her shoulder grabbed by a strong hand, and she was unceremoniously dragged back on to the path.

“Why don’t you look where you’re going?” a man’s voice demanded angrily. “You might have been killed,” and she looked up, flushed and indignant, into a pair of grey eyes that were scowling fiercely at her from beneath rather bushy brows.

“You might have been run over,” their owner said again more quietly. “Do you always walk about the streets dreaming?” Then suddenly he smiled, and when he smiled he looked quite young and jolly, so that involuntarily Linda smiled too, and forgot her annoyance.

“I wasn’t dreaming. I was thinking,” she corrected him gravely, and then as an after-thought she added, “Thank you, if you saved my life.”

He laughed. “Well, it wasn’t anything to write to the papers about,” he said cheerily. “But the car was coming rather quickly, and you might have been knocked down. . . . Hullo, it’s going to rain!”

The sunshine had all disappeared, and even as the man spoke, without any warning, a sudden shower came spattering down, making people run to right and left for shelter.

“There’s a doorway here,” the man said: he glanced at Linda, and then up at the sky. “It won’t last,” he added, and led the way under the shelter of a porch just behind them.

Linda followed and stood rather shyly beside him, watching the raindrops dancing down on the pavement.

“Like a spring shower,” said the man.

“Yes.” She glanced up at him interestedly. He was not at all good looking, in fact, she was not at all sure that she did not consider him rather ugly, except when he smiled, and then his face seemed to light up in the most unexpected fashion.

He was tall and rather thin, and the curiously bushy eyebrows made him look much older than he really was, and much more severe.

But he had nice grey eyes, and a well-cut mouth and chin, and what little Linda could see of his hair beneath his soft grey hat was dark.

The rain showed no sign of diminishing.

“It’s going to last,” the man said disgustedly; he looked at Linda again, “Do you live far away?”

“No. I can get a bus.”

He smiled amusedly.

“Can you? I doubt it. Look at the crowd fighting for them now.”

He glanced across the road to where a struggling mass of men and women were pushing and jostling one another to get on to an omnibus out of the pelting rain.

“Better stay here for a little while and wait,” he advised.

“Very well.”

Linda did not mind; she was not in a hurry to get home, and she was a girl who could always find plenty of amusement in watching the people around her.

Presently she asked politely, mindful of her companion’s previous consideration for her:

“Have you far to go to get home?”

He laughed. “Well, I don’t know about home—but I haven’t far to go to my place of business,” he explained. “You see, I’m down the road in Lorne and Dodwell’s, the drapers.”

Linda’s face flushed with excitement.

It seemed to her that providence must have sent this man straight into her life to help her towards the goal of her great ambition; she caught at the sleeve of his coat eagerly as she repeated his words.

“In Lorne and Dodwell’s! Oh, how perfectly lovely!”

“Lovely!” He looked intensely amused. “I don’t know that I’ve ever considered it very lovely,” he submitted drily.

“Grannie says that people never appreciate a thing when they have got it,” Linda told him primly. “But it’s my ambition to go into a draper’s shop—not that I shall ever be lucky to get into such a splendid one as yours,” she added regretfully, then her face brightened again. “What department are you in?” she asked.

He laughed outright at that.

“Well, I’m not exactly in any department,” he said rather dubiously, “though I know practically the whole business. You see——” he hesitated, then he added, “you see I happen to be Robert Lorne.”

“Oh!” Linda’s hand fell from his sleeve, and she flushed crimson. “Oh, I beg your pardon! I never thought . . . never guessed.”

“Of course not, how could you?” he answered easily. “I don’t flatter myself that I’m as well known as all that. . . . And so it’s your ambition to go into a shop, is it?”

“Yes. You see, I’ve got to work—my father died and left us without much money, so I must work; and the only thing I should care to do would be to go into a shop.” She smiled suddenly, showing a little dimple at the corner of her mouth. “Mother used to say it was the commercial instinct coming out,” she told him in friendly fashion.

“The commercial instinct is not at all a bad thing to have nowadays,” young Lorne said; he looked at her consideringly for a moment, then, “You’re rather young, aren’t you?” he asked hesitatingly.

Linda told a white lie, feeling entirely justified.

“I’m seventeen.”

“Really!” He looked surprised. “I should not have thought you were so much. However——” He hesitated again, then asked abruptly: “What do your people think of . . . of this idea of yours?”

“There is only Grannie to think anything at all,” Linda said rather sadly. “Grannie and Mr. Stern—he’s the lawyer, but he thinks it’s quite right. He thinks if people are very keen on anything they should be allowed to do it.”

Robert Lorne laughed.

“Does he! Isn’t that rather a tall order?”

“I don’t think so. Grannie didn’t approve at first, but she’s quite resigned now.” Again came the quick little smile and the dimple. “Grannie’s a darling—but she’s got old-fashioned ideas.”

“And old-fashioned ideas are not bad things to have nowadays, either,” young Lorne said.

“No, I suppose not.” Linda looked anxiously up at the sky, which was clearing very quickly, showing a faint gleam of sunshine. She wished with all her heart that it would go on raining, so that she could stay here and ask this interesting man some more about his wonderful business, but apparently he was anxious to go, for he stepped out on to the path.

“The rain has stopped. I must be getting along.”

Linda stifled a regretful sigh; such an opportunity would never occur again she was sure, and she was trying to summon enough courage to ask if he could not possibly help her towards the fulfilment of her ambition, when he said diffidently:—

“I wonder if you would care to come along and see my uncle? He’s the head of the firm, you know, and if you told him what you have just told me. . . .”

She gave a little broken cry of delight.

“Oh, could I? May I?—wouldn’t he mind?”

“I am sure he would be delighted,” Robert Lorne said rather stiffly.

He thought this girl very amusing, and for her age a most determined young person, and he thought it would be interesting to see what impression she made on his uncle, for Samuel Lorne was admitted to be one of the hardest-headed men of business who ever made his way unaided through life, and also the keenest judge of character.

So together he and Linda crossed the muddy road and walked the few yards to the big entrance door of Lorne and Dodwell’s, and with a fast-beating heart she followed him through the softly carpeted departments and down a long passage till they came to a door with a frosted glass pane with the word “Private” written across it and underneath the two magical names—

“Mr. Samuel Lorne,

Mr. Robert Lorne.”

Her companion stopped then and looked down at her. “You’ve no need to be afraid,” he said, mistaking the flush on her cheeks for nervousness, and Linda shook her head as she answered: “I’m not a bit afraid, thank you.”

Robert Lorne said: “Oh, I see,” rather dryly, and opened the door, standing back for her to pass through.

An elderly man with white hair and a thin, parchment-like face sat at a table with a large cup of tea beside him.

At first glance he looked kindly and mild enough, but when he raised his eyes even Linda’s youthful temerity received a check, for beneath the beetling brows which were so like his nephew’s his eyes were as keen as steel gimlets, and Linda had the uncomfortable feeling that at one glance he had seen right through her, and knew just how anxious and eager she was to make a good impression upon him.

And then he said, “Well!” in a gruff, unfriendly voice, and looked at his nephew. “Well, what is it?” he said again.

Robert drew a chair forward for Linda, but she was too excited to sit down; she stood there twisting her hands together, her eyes bright with eagerness, while he explained the reason of her visit.

“I know you always believe in encouraging youthful enterprise,” he finished up, and there was a twinkle of amusement in his eyes as he looked at the elder man. “So I ventured to bring Miss. . . .” He turned to Linda. “By the way, what is your name?” he asked.

Linda told him promptly.

“Linda Lovelace”—and the man at the table grunted and said “Humph! A good name for our business,” and for a moment he stared hard at Linda silently. Then he said again, “What’s your father?”

“He’s dead.”

The heavy brows almost met in a frown.

“I didn’t ask where he was. I asked what he was!”

“He was a partner in Dawson and Welby, the silk merchants,” Linda told him with a touch of pride.

“Dawson and Welby!” His scowl deepened. “Pooh! there was nobody of the name of Lovelace in that unfortunate firm.”

Tears rose to Linda’s eyes.

“His name was Dawson,” she explained. “My mother’s maiden name was Lovelace, and as I’ve got to work for my living now, I thought I would take it, as I like it better than Dawson.”

“I see.” Mr. Lorne finished his tea, and turned his chair round in order to get a better view of her. “So you’re poor Dawson’s daughter, eh?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I knew your father very well.” His voice was more kindly. “I knew him well, and sympathised with his failure, which was due to no fault of his. He was the one straight man in a gang of scoundrels.”

“Yes,” said Linda gratefully: she liked him for speaking so kindly of her father.

“But because I knew him, that will be no reason for treating you any differently to the rest of my staff—always supposing I give you a trial,” the old man went on. “You’ll have to start at the bottom of the ladder and work your way up, as I had to—as my nephew here had to—as anyone who is worth their salt can do!”

“Yes,” said Linda.

There was another silence, then Samuel Lorne looked at his nephew.

“Well, supposing we give the little girl a chance?” he suggested.

Looking back on that afternoon it always seemed like a dream to Linda—a dream from the moment when Robert Lorne’s hand dragged her back to safety from the speeding motor-car, till the moment when she walked out of his uncle’s office with a promise of a start in the great firm of Lorne and Dodwell at the astounding salary of fifteen shillings a week and her lunch and tea.

Robert Lorne escorted her back to the street door, and shook hands with her solemnly; but there was a twinkle in his eyes beneath their heavy brows, and he had hard work to check a smile when she turned impulsively to him at the last moment to ask—

“Mr. Lorne really means it, doesn’t he? I really have been given the post, haven’t I?”

“My uncle is a man of his word, Miss Lovelace,” Robert Lorne answered. She gave a great sigh of relief.

“Yes, I knew he was,” she said, and a moment later she had disappeared through the heavy swing doors and was speeding away down the street.

Her face felt hot, and her heart was beating fast with excitement as she burst into her grandmother’s drawing-room.

“It’s happened! I’ve done it! They’ve engaged me, and I start on Monday morning. Fifteen shillings a week, Grannie, and lunch and tea. In Lorne and Dodwell’s—Mr. Lorne himself engaged me. I met him in the rain—the nephew I mean, not the uncle—and I told him I wanted to go into a shop, and he said if I liked I could go to see his uncle, and the uncle’s a director—and I went to the office, and he knew father! and I told him why I’ve changed my name—and he said because of that I shouldn’t have any favouritism shown, and he was awfully nice, and they both shook hands with me, and. . . .” She flung her arms round the old lady’s neck and kissed her rapturously. “Oh, isn’t it perfectly wonderful.”

Mrs. Lovelace extricated herself from her granddaughter’s arms and gasped.

“My dear child, what are you talking about?” she objected in alarm. “I haven’t understood one word, and I’ve only heard about two. Sit down and take off your hat and coat, and get your breath. Have you got wet? You took no umbrella, I know——” She passed an anxious hand over the girl’s shoulders. “Did you stand up for the shower? Oh, my dear, do sit down quietly, and get your breath.”

Linda obeyed with an effort; she could not understand why the whole world was not as excited about her afternoon’s adventure as she was, but she managed to control herself, and tell Mrs. Lovelace with more or less clearness exactly what had happened.

“And I start on Monday morning,” she added again breathlessly.

Mrs. Lovelace felt with a white, helpless hand for her smelling salts. “And . . . have these two gentlemen given you any guarantee of their integrity?” she asked faintly.

Linda laughed.

“Oh, darling, don’t behave as if we came out of the Ark,” she objected.

“Mr. Lorne is a most wonderful man, and I love him already. He’s got eyes like the sparks that come off an anvil, and brows like this——” and she screwed her sweet face up into a very bad imitation of old Samuel Lorne’s.

“And—the nephew?” Mrs. Lovelace asked with the deadly calm of a great despair. “Do you love him also, may I ask?”

Linda waved an airy hand.

“Oh, he’s only quite young, and so he doesn’t count,” she explained. “He must be quite a junior partner—at least, his name came second on the office door.”

Mrs. Lovelace applied a handkerchief to her eyes.

“I don’t know what your poor father would say,” she wept.

Linda stood up. She looked very independent and confident, and her eyes were almost fierce.

“He’d say—he’d say that he was proud of me,” she said in a voice that was not quite steady. “I know that’s what poor Daddy would say.”

“And if anything happens and you do not like the life——” her grandmother said faintly. “If anything happens that you cannot stand the hard work——”

“Darling, it won’t be hard! and there are heaps of other girls there, and they can’t all be so much stronger than I am.”

“But the continual standing!” Mrs. Lovelace wailed. “I have so often felt sorry for the poor girls. Linda, if anything happens to you, what will become of me?”

“Nothing will happen, except that some day I hope I shall have a business of my own,” Linda said confidently. “Oh, Grannie, how can you sit there and cry, when I thought you’d be so proud and pleased?”

But for some minutes Mrs. Lovelace was inconsolable.

“I had such plans for you. I hoped you would be presented at Court, and make a great marriage,” she sobbed, for the first time speaking of the cherished ambitions she had dreamed of for her darling.

Linda turned away, and for a moment there was silence; then she said in a firm little voice that held a strong note like her father’s: “Grannie, I haven’t any ambitions like that. I hate money that is only used to have what people call a good time—money that is used as—as mother used it—for frocks and diamonds and—and trying to go to places where she wasn’t wanted, and to know people who didn’t want to know her except for what she’d got. Father was a self-made man, and that’s something to be proud of. It wasn’t his fault that he failed, poor darling—why, even Mr. Lorne said that he was the one straight man in a gang of scoundrels. . . .” Her voice faltered but she went on again bravely.

“I’m going to make my own way as he did! and as for a great marriage!” she laughed with youthful scorn, “well, I never want to get married at all, if it’s going to be like Daddy’s was——”

“All women are not bad,” Mrs. Lovelace averred. “And there must be many happy marriages in the world. Some husbands are goodness itself to their wives.”

Linda turned and looked at her steadily.

“Was yours?” she asked.

Mrs. Lovelace tried to temporise.

“Your grandfather was a very difficult man, my dear. He took a great deal of understanding. I cannot truthfully say that we were always happy—nobody can expect to be always happy; but he had his good points.”

Linda began to laugh.

“Oh, Grannie; and I heard you say once that the day you most liked him was the day he died.”

A faint flush rose to the old lady’s cheek, and she held her head high with dignity.

“I think you are speaking of something you are far too young to understand,” she complained, and sailed out of the room with a great rustling of silk skirts.

Linda grew grave when she was alone again. She crossed to the mantelshelf and looked at herself in a mirror which hung above it.

It had so often reflected her mother’s beauty in its settings of expensive frocks and hats, and for a moment a pang of remorse touched the girl’s heart as she thought of her.

Where was she now? And what was she doing? So little was known of the man with whom she had made her heartless flight. Mr. Stern had told Mrs. Lovelace that beyond the fact that he had had a bad reputation and no money, nothing had been discovered about him, and the old lady had always rather shrunk from the subject.

“I wonder if I shall ever see her again,” was the thought in Linda’s mind as she looked at her own grave reflection; and then, “And I wonder if she is happy.”

Happiness was such a great thing, and even to her youth there seemed little enough of it in the world, and she remembered that she had once heard Mr. Stern say that people would find life easier if they only had more to occupy their time.

“Work! That’s the thing to make life worth while,” he had told her. “You remember that, my dear. Work well, then you’ll be able to play well, and then you’ll be happy.”

“And I will be happy, I will,” Linda told herself determinedly. “I will make a success of my life, and do something that is worth while.”

And in her room overheard Mrs. Lovelace, wiping away her tears and trying to believe that everything was for the best no matter how much of a mistake it might seem at first, heard Linda’s happy voice singing a snatch of the old song which she had taught her as a small child:

“Ladies with blue eyes, and ladies with true eyes,

Listen, oh list to my cry!

Ribbons and laces for sweet pretty faces,

Oh, come to the market and buy!”

“If only she is going to be happy, that’s all I care about,” the old lady told herself passionately. “If only she is going to be happy.”