And William Leroy, brought to himself, stood where she left him. The hand on the newel-post suddenly closed hard upon it, then he straightened and walked into the parlour, and, sitting down, stared at the embers of the wood fire, as one bewildered. Then his head lifted as with one who understands. On his face was a strange look and a light. CHAPTER SIX Alexina went up to her mother and Mrs. Leroy. Molly was lolling in a big chair in the sunshine, idly swinging the tassel of her wrapper to and fro. The shadows about her eyes were other than those lent by the sweep of her childlike lashes, and she looked wan. But she looked at peace, too. In her present state the flow of Mrs. Leroy's personal chat was entertainment. Now, there was always one central theme to Charlotte's talk, whatever the variations. "He hasn't a bit of false pride, Willy hasn't," she was stating. "After his father lost his position, those two years before the trees began paying, there's nothing Willy wouldn't turn his hand to. He carried a chain for the surveyors and went as guide for parties hunting and fishing in the glades." Molly's attention sometimes wandered from these maternal confidences. "You were Charlotte Ransome before you were married, weren't you?" she asked irrelevantly. "You used to come to New Orleans winters, didn't you? You were at a party at my Uncle Randolph's once when I was a girl and you were spoken of as a great beauty, I remember. There was a pompon head-dress too, one winter, called the Charlotte Ransome." The Charlotte listening, only the vivacity of smile and eyes left of her beauty, the Charlotte living the obscure life of a little raw Southern town, let her needle fall, the needle she handled with the awkwardness of a craft acquired late. She was darning an old tablecloth, come down from her mother's day, that day when triumphs and adulation made up life, and when cost or reckoning was a thing she troubled not herself about. She was that Charlotte Ransome again, called up by Mrs. Garnier, the beauty, the fashion, and the belle. "Oh," she said, "the joy of youth, the joy! Old Madame d'Arblay, the Louisville milliner, devised that pompon head-dress out of her own cleverness, and I remember my old Aunt Polly Ann Love tried to talk her down on the price. How it comes back, the intoxication of it, and the living. Drink deep, little Mab, it never offers twice. I seemed to have divined it never would be again." The girl looked from one woman to the other. Molly still pursued this thing called adulation, and Mrs. Leroy, big-hearted, simple-souled as she was, looked yearningly back on that which was gone. Was this all, then? Was life forever after empty, except as with Mrs. Leroy, of duties that occupied but did not satisfy? And what of women who are neither beauties nor belles? What has life to offer them? A vast depression came over the girl. And was this all? Both women bore witness that it was.