A little scrawl of a note, delivered just after breakfast at Mr. Elton's
door, brought Madeline to visit Mrs. Percival, who, like her mother,
seemed to be in continual need of her.
She found that lady lying in her favorite chair in the library--the
chair that had been her refuge in the days of her early widowhood, that
had comfortably housed her when books carried her away from her own
world of sorrows and problems into the world of illusions, the chair in
which she had dreamed of the great things that were to come into a
younger life, not her own, and yet deeply her own,--her son's.
Now she lay back in it with clasped hands, thinner than usual and with
eyes sadder. Madeline came in like a young Hebe, glowing with health and
vigor, and infinitely tender toward fragility.
"You are ill, dear mother Percival," cried the girl, dropping to her
knees and slipping an arm behind her friend's back in an unconscious
attitude of protection.
Mrs. Percival's fingers followed the soft curve that the girl's hair
made around her forehead.
"No, dear," she said slowly, "but I had something to tell you. I wanted
to speak to you myself, before any one else had the chance."
"Please tell me quickly."
"So many of my dearest hopes have come to nothing!" Mrs. Percival went
on, with a little bitterness that Madeline thought unlike her. "Each
blow, as it falls, seems the hardest to bear. I've tried to accept
whatever happens, graciously. It isn't always easy, Madeline, dear."
"Yes?" said Madeline.
"Dick--"
"Is anything the matter with Dick?" Madeline rose with a little cry.
"Dick does not think so," his mother answered. "My child, you have seen
something of this little Miss Quincy?"
Madeline's eyes dropped for the tenth of a second and a heaviness took
possession of her body; then she lifted her head bravely.
"Yes," she answered, "I know Miss Quincy--quite the most beautiful girl
I have ever seen."
"Very beautiful," echoed Mrs. Percival. "So I too thought, the only time
I ever saw her. Well, Madeline, what I have to tell you is that Dick is
to marry her."
The girl saw that the older woman's hands were trembling, and she laid
her own warm young palms over the cold old ones.
"I hope Dick will be very happy," she said softly. "I--I'm not a bit
surprised. We ought to have seen that it was coming. And Dick loves
her!"
And she laid her cheek against Mrs. Percival's, but the other pushed her
away and stared into the eyes so near her own.
"And you can take it so quietly?" she asked. "Forgive me, dear, if for
once I break down the barriers of reserve. I love you so much, let me be
frank. Surely you know what I hoped, what I thought."