“Imperator, you have an agreeable way of putting things.  But they are coming through the hall.  Good-night.”

CHAPTER XXXIII.

At eleven o’clock the next day I was ready for departure.  All stood by the open hall door, criticising Murphy’s strapping of my trunks on a hack.  Messrs. Digby and Devereaux, in black satin scarfs, hung over the step railings; Mrs. Somers, Adelaide, and Ann were within the door.  Mr. Somers and Ben were already on the walk, waiting for me; so I went through the ceremony of bidding good-by—­a ceremony performed with so much cheerfulness on all sides that it was an occasion for well-bred merriment, and I made my exit as I should have made it in a genteel comedy, but with a bitter feeling of mortification, because of their artificial, willful imperturbability I was forced to oppose them with manners copied after their own.

I looked from the carriage window for a last view of my room.  The chambermaid was already there, and had thrown open the shutters, to let in daylight upon the scene of the most royal dreams I had ever had.  The ghost of my individuality would lurk there no longer than the chairs I had placed, the books I had left, the shreds of paper or flowers I had scattered, could be moved or swept away.

All the way to Boston the transition to my old condition oppressed me.  I felt a dreary disgust at the necessity of resuming relations which had no connection with the sentiment that bound me to Belem.  After we were settled at the Tremont, while watching a sad waiter engaged in the ceremonial of folding napkins like fans, I discovered an intermediate tone of mind, which gave my thoughts a picturesque tinge.  My romance, its regrets, and its pleasures, should be set in the frame of the wild sea and shores of Surrey.  I invested our isolated house with the dignity of a stage, where the drama, which my thoughts must continually represent, could go on without interruption, and remain a secret I should have no temptation to reveal.  Until after the tedious dinner, a complete rainbow of dreams spanned the arc of my brain.  Mr. Somers dispersed it by asking Ben to go out on some errand.  That it was a pretext, I knew by Ben’s expression; therefore, when he had gone I turned to Mr. Somers an attentive face.  First, he circumlocuted; second, he skirmished.  I still waited for what he wished to say, without giving him any aid.  He was sure, he said at last, that my visit in his family had convinced me that his children could not vary the destiny imposed upon them by their antecedents, without bringing upon others lamentable consequences.  “Cunning pa,” I commented internally.  Had I not seen the misery of unequal marriages?

“As in a glass, darkly.”

Doubtless, he went on, I had comprehended the erratic tendency in Ben’s character, good and honorable as he was, but impressive and visionary.  Did I think so?