Her “poor” friend came in, whenever he could, for tea and toast; and sometimes he made what he called “a miserable return” for this hospitality, by asking Godmother and Mary Alice to dine with him at his palace on upper Fifth Avenue and afterwards to sit in his box at the opera.  He was a widower, and his two sons were married and lived in palaces of their own.  His only daughter was abroad finishing her education; and his great, lonely house was to serve a brief purpose for her when she “came out” and until she married.  Then, he thought, he would either give it up or turn it over to her; certainly he would not keep it for himself.

At first, Mary Alice found it hard to remember the Secret “with so many footmen around.”  But by and by she got used to them and, other things being equal, could have nearly as good a time in a palace as in a flat.  For this, she had a wonderful example in Godmother of whom some one had once said, admiringly, that she was “never mean to anybody just because he’s rich.”  It was true.  Godmother was just as “nice” to the rich as to the poor, to the “cowering celebrity” (as she was wont to say) as to the most important nobody.  It was the Secret that helped her to do it.  It was the Secret that helped Mary Alice.

And so the winter went flying by.  Twice, letters came—­from him; and Mary Alice answered them, giving the answers to Godmother to send.  Once he wrote from London, and once from somewhere on the Bosphorus.  They were lonesome letters, both; but he didn’t ask for the Secret, though he mentioned it each time.

IX

TELLING THE SECRET TO MOTHER

In March, Godmother said:  “I am going abroad for the summer, dear, and I’ve just had a conference with my man of affairs.  He reports some unexpectedly good dividends from my small handful of stock in a company that is enjoying a boom, and so if we’re careful—­you and I—­there will be enough so I can take you with me.”  Mary Alice was too surprised, too happy to speak.  “Now, you’ll want to go home, of course,” Godmother went on, “and so we’ll agree on a sailing date and then you may fly back to mother as soon as you wish, and stay till it’s time to go abroad.”

They decided to sail the first of May; so Mary Alice went home almost immediately, and on an evening late in March got off the train on to that familiar platform whence she had so fearfully set forth only four short months ago.

Father was at the station to meet her; and at home, by the soft-coal fire burning beneath the white marble mantel in the sitting-room, Mother was sewing and waiting for her.

Mary Alice was thinking, as she and Father neared the house, of that miserable evening in the fall when she had stolen past her mother and gone up to her room and wept passionately, in the dark, because life had no enchantment for her.  There would be no stealing past dear Mother now!  For the Secret was for Mother, too—­yes, very much indeed for Mother, as Mary Alice and Godmother had agreed in their wonderful “tucking in” talk the night before Mary Alice came away.  All the way home, on the train, she had hardly been able to wait till she got to Mother with this beautiful new thing in her heart.