{104}
Whenever Delia tried to explore the{105} secret of her cousin’s actions she returned from the adventure humiliated and abashed by the base motives she found herself attributing to Charlotte. How was it that she, Delia Ralston, whose happiness had been open and avowed to the world, so often found herself envying poor Charlotte the secret of her scanted motherhood? She hated herself for this movement of envy whenever she detected it, and tried to atone for it by a softened manner and a more anxious regard for Charlotte’s feelings; but the attempt was not always successful, and Delia sometimes wondered if Charlotte did not resent any show of sympathy as an indirect glance at her misfortune. The worst of suffering such as hers was that it left one sore to the gentlest touch....
{105}
Delia, slowly undressing before the same lace-draped toilet-glass which had{106} reflected her bridal image, was turning over these thoughts when she heard a light knock. She opened the door, and there stood Tina, in a dressing-gown, her dark curls falling over her shoulders.
{106}
With a happy heart-beat Delia held out her arms.
“I had to say goodnight, Mamma,” the girl whispered.
“Of course, dear.” Delia pressed a long kiss on her lifted forehead. “Run off now, or you might disturb your aunt. You know she sleeps badly, and you must be as quiet as a mouse now she’s next to you.”
“Yes, I know,” Tina acquiesced, with a grave glance that was almost of complicity.
She asked no further question, she did not linger: lifting Delia’s hand she held it a moment against her cheek, and then stole out as noiselessly as she had come.{107}
{107}
VIII
“BUT you must see,” Charlotte Lovell insisted, laying aside the Evening Post, “that Tina has changed. You do see that?”
“B
The two women were sitting alone by the drawing-room fire in Gramercy Park. Tina had gone to dine with her cousin, young Mrs. John Junius Halsey, and was to be taken afterward to a ball at the Vandergraves’, from which the John Juniuses had promised to see her home. Mrs. Ralston and Charlotte, their early dinner finished, had the long evening to themselves. Their custom,
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