"Rather pretty, yes," Ethie said, making a great effort to speak
naturally, and adding after a moment: "I suppose it will be taken down
when the other Mrs. Markham comes."
In Mrs. Dobson's mind the other Mrs. Markham only meant Melinda, and she
replied: "Why should it? She knows it is here. She knew the other lady and liked
her, too."
"She knew me? Who can it be?" Ethie asked herself, remembering that the
name she had heard at Clifton was a strange one to her.
"This, now, is the very handsomest part of the whole house," Mrs. Dobson
said, throwing open a door which led from Richard's room into a suite of
apartments which, to Ethie's bewildered gaze, seemed more like fairyland
than anything real she had ever seen. "This the governor fitted up
expressly for his wife and I'm told he spent more money here than in all
the upper rooms. Did you ever see handsomer lace? He sent to New York
for them," she said, lifting up one of the exquisitely wrought curtains
festooned across the arch which divided the boudoir from the large
sleeping room beyond. "This I call the bridal chamber," she continued,
stepping into the room where everything was so pure and white. "But,
bless me, I forgot that I put on a lot of bottles to heat: I'll venture
they are every one of them shivered to atoms. Hannah is so careless.
Excuse me, will you, and entertain yourself a while. I reckon you can
find your way back to the parlor."
Ethelyn wanted nothing so much as to be left alone and free to indulge
in the emotions which were fast getting the mastery of her. Covering her
face with her hands, as the door closed after Mrs. Dobson, she sat for a
moment bereft of the power to think or feel. Then, as things became more
real, as great throbs of heat and pain went tearing through her temples,
she remembered that she was in Richard's house, up in the room which
Mrs. Dobson had termed the bridal chamber, the apartments which had been
fitted up for Richard's bride, whoever she might be.
"I never counted on this," she whispered, as she paced up and down the
range of rooms, from the little parlor or boudoir to the dressing room
beyond the bedroom, and the little conservatory at the side, where the
choicest of plants were in blossom, and where the dampness was so cool
to her burning brow.
It did not strike her as strange that Richard should have thought of all
this, nor did she wonder whose taste had aided him in making such a
home. She did not wonder at anything except at herself, who had missed
so much and fallen into such depths of woe.