Madeline was inwardly bemoaning her own lack of tact. She really wanted
to make a friend of this girl, because Dick had asked her to, and here,
at the very beginning, she had stumbled, and all that was meant to show
her regard and sympathy but served to make a gulf between them.
Mrs. Lenox darted a look at her and sprang suddenly to her feet.
"Oh, here's Frank," she exclaimed with an air of relief. "Come in, boy,
and have some tea and fire. It was good of you to come so bright and
early."
"Earlier than bright, I'm afraid," he said.
Lena looked with interest toward the door. Frank Lenox was great in St.
Etienne, first because he was the son-in-law of old Nicholas Windsor, a
potentate of the first local magnitude, and second, because he was
pushing to still greater success the enterprises that the elder man had
begun. So people talked about him in the street-cars by his first name.
Lena felt that it was a privilege to look at him, big, clean, with that
mingling of alertness with power which is the characteristic of the
American business man. It was an experience of absorbing interest to see
the half underhand caress he gave his wife in passing, and to find
herself actually shaking hands with him. He seemed imposing and friendly
and yet quite like other people, as he looked around for a capacious
chair and his wife handed him a cup of tea. She was conscious that he
looked at her with great interest. She recognized the expression in
masculine eyes and it soothed her ruffled spirit. It was the constant
affirmation of her beauty, a beauty which had in it something dream-like
that made men's eyes dream. After all, she could always get along with
men.
"If you'd know what brought me home before my time, it was not your
charms, my dear, but a mad desire to get away from Harris, who cornered
me and opened up the negro question. I saw nothing for it but to take to
the woods."
"It makes my traditional abolition blood boil to see how public opinion
seems to be settling down and dallying with heresy and injustice
again," Madeline exclaimed. She looked flushed and vigorous, and Lena
stared at her and wondered how she could care for such things. Was it
pure affectation?
"Oh, you're young, my dear," said Mrs. Lenox laughingly. "You must hold
all your opinions violently. And you haven't been South. Things can't
help looking different down there."
"Vera!" cried Miss Elton so explosively that Lena sat up straighter than
ever, "you're not really a renegade yourself, are you?" and she spoke as
though her life depended on the answer.
"Certainly not," Mrs. Lenox answered. "But I'm growing tolerant toward
the poor old world as it is. I'm willing to let it grow slowly instead
of insisting that it shall all be immediately as good and wise as I am.
I'm learning to respect other people's point of view and to suspect that
my mind is not such an ingenious mechanism as I once supposed it to be."