Part 22

"You always were a bright boy, Alden," she laughed. Another woman might have torn it open rudely, but Madame searched through her old mahogany desk until she found a tarnished silver letter-opener, thus according due courtesy to her unknown correspondent.

Having opened it, she discovered that she could not read the handwriting, which was angular and involved beyond the power of words to indicate.

"Here," she said. "Your eyes are better than mine."

Alden took it readily. "My eyes may be good," he observed, after a long pause, "but my detective powers are not. The m's and n's are all alike, and so are most of the other letters. She's an economical person--she makes the same hieroglyphic do duty for both a g and a y."

"It's from a woman, then?"

"Certainly. Did you ever know a man to sprawl a note all over two sheets of paper, with nothing to distinguish the end from the beginning? In the nature of things, you'd expect her to commence at the top of a sheet, and, in a careless moment, she may have done so. Let me see--yes, here it is: 'My dear Mrs. Marsh.'"

"Go on, please," begged Madame, after a silence. "It was just beginning to be interesting."

"'During my mother's last illness,'" Alden read, with difficulty, "'she told me that if I were ever in trouble, I should go to you--that you would stand in her place to me. I write to ask if I may come, for I can no longer see the path ahead of me, and much less do I know the way in which I should go.

"'You surely remember her. She was Louise Lane before her marriage to my father, Edward Archer.

"'Please send me a line or two, telling me I may come, if only for a day. Believe me, no woman ever needed a friendly hand to guide her more than

"'Yours unhappily,

"'EDITH ARCHER LEE.'"

"Louise Lane," murmured Madame, reminiscently. "My old schoolmate! I didn't even know that she had a daughter, or that she was dead. How strangely we lose track of one another in this world!"

"Yes?" said Alden, encouragingly.

"Louise was a beautiful girl," continued Madame, half to herself. "She had big brown eyes, with long lashes, a thick, creamy skin that someway reminded you of white rose-petals, and the most glorious red hair you ever saw. She married an actor, and I heard indirectly that she had gone on the stage, then I lost her entirely."

"Yes?" said Alden, again.

"Edith Archer Lee," Madame went on. "She must be married. Think of Louise Lane having a daughter old enough to be married! And yet--my Virginia would have been thirty-two now. Dear me, how the time goes by!"

The tall clock on the landing chimed five deep musical strokes, the canary hopped restlessly about his gilt cage, and the last light of the sweet Spring afternoon, searching the soft shadows of the room, found the crystal ball on the table and made merry with it.

"Time is still going by," Alden reminded her. "What are you going to do?"

Madame started from her reverie. "Do? Why, she must come, of course!"

"I don't see why," Alden objected, gloomily. "I don't like strange women."

"It is not a question of what we like or don't like, my son," she returned, in gentle reproof. "She is in trouble and she needs something we can give her."

"When people are in trouble, they usually want either money or sympathy, or both."

"Sometimes they only need advice."

"There are lots of places where they can get it. Advice is as free as salvation is said to be."

Madame sighed. Then she crossed the room, and put her hands upon his shoulders. "Dear, are you going to be cross?"

His face softened. "Never to you, if I know it, but why should strange women invade the peace of a man's home? Why should a woman who writes like that come here?"

"Don't blame her for her handwriting--she can't help it."