they had told me. I was amazed.
But they had seen me see it. A great squabble broke out. The girl’s uncles had come, Ragnar and Felix Mayfair, young men famous about the town, and known to be suspicious of us. They started to block my way.
But in an instant the wind had gathered. All could feel it stealing along the floor, icy and strong. It whipped those who blocked the way, until they stepped back, and then I took the girl by the hand and led her back into the front hall and down the main staircase. Stella crept at my side.
“Oh, Oncle Julien,” Stella said as breathlessly as some village girl to a great prince. “I adore you.”
And with us walked this pale swan of a girl, with her shimmering hair and her sticks for arms and sticks for legs, and pitiful dress made from a flowered feed sack. I don’t know if you have ever seen such clothing, poorest of the poor. Women used this cloth to line their everyday quilts and she had it for a frock, this cheap flowered cotton. And her shoes, they were scarcely shoes at all, rather leather socks of some sort, laced, like booties of a baby!
I took her through the hall, the wind rattling and swinging the doors, and going before us, stirring the oaks outside, and brushing the many cars and carriages and carts that passed on the Avenue.
No one moved to stop me as I handed her up to Richard to be placed in the car. And then, sitting close beside her, with Stella again on my knee, I gave the order for Richard to go, and the girl turned round and stared at the house, and at the high window, and at the collection of people on the porch in astonishment.
We had not gone five feet when they all began to scream. “Murderer, murderer! He’s taken Evelyn!” and to cry to one another to do something about it. Young Ragnar ran out and cried that he would proceed against me in a court of law.
“By all means do,” I cried back over the rumbling car, “ruin yourself in the process. I am father to the finest law firm in the city! Sue! I cannot wait.”
The car made its way awkwardly and noisily up St. Charles, yet faster than any horse-drawn carriage. And the girl sat still between Richard and me, under Stella’s curious eye, staring at everything as if she had never been out of doors before.
Mary Beth waited on the step.
“And what do you mean to do with her?”
“Richard,” I said, “I can’t walk any farther.”
“I’ll fetch the boys, Julien,” he cried, and off he ran, calling and clapping. Stella and the girl climbed down and Stella lifted both her hands to me.
“I’ve got you, darling. I won’t let you fall, my hero.”
The girl stood with her hands at her sides, staring at me, and then at Mary Beth, and then at the house, and at the servant boys who came running.
“What do you mean to do with her?” Mary Beth demanded again.
“Child, will you come into our house?” I said, looking at this lithe and lovely girl with pale shell-pink tender little mouth protruding beautifully on account of her hollow cheeks, and eyes the color of the gray sky in a rainstorm.
“Will you come into our house,” I said again, “and there safe beneath our roof decide if you want to spend your life a prisoner or not? Stella, if I die on the way upstairs, I charge you to save this girl, you hear me?”
“You won’t die,” said Richard, my lover, “come, I’ll help you.” But I could see the apprehension in his face. He was more worried about me than anyone.
Stella led the way. The girl followed, and then Richard came, all but carrying me in his exuberantly manly way, with his arm around me, hoisting me step by step so that I might keep what dignity I had.
At last we entered my room on the third floor of the house.
“Get the girl some food,” I said. “She looks as if she has never had a square meal.” I sent Stella off with Richard. I collapsed on the side of my bed, too exhausted to think for a moment.
Then I looked up and my soul was filled with despair. This beautiful fresh creature on the brink of life, and I so old, very soon to end it. I was so tired I might have