Henrietta had married very well, two years after I saw her at R——­, and was the staid, placid matron that she was always meant to be.

Charlotte Benson was the clever woman still:  a little stronger-minded, and no less good-looking than of old, and no more.  People were beginning to say that she would not marry, though she was only twenty-six.  She did not go much to parties, and was not in my set.  She affected art and lectures, and excursions to mountains, and campings-out, and unconventionalities, and no doubt had a good time in her way.  But it was not my way:  and so we seldom met.  When we did, she did not show much more respect for me than of old, which always had the effect of making me feel angry.

And as for Richard, we could not have been much further apart, if he had lived “in England and I at Rotterdam.”  For a year, while he was settling up the estate, he was closely in the city.  I did not see him more than once or twice, all business being transacted through his lawyer, and the clerk of whom he had spoken to me.  After the business matters of the estate were all in order, he went away, intending, I believe, to stay a year or two.  But he came back before many months were over, and settled down into the routine of business life, which now seemed to have become necessary to him.

Travel was only a weariness to him in his state of mind; and work, and city-life, seemed the panacea.  He did not live with Sophie, but took apartments, which he furnished plainly; and seemed settling down, according to his brother, into much of the sort of life that Uncle Leonard had led so many years in Varick-street.

Sophie still went to R——­, and I often heard of the pleasant parties there in summer.  But Richard seldom went, and seemed to have lost his interest in the place, though I have no doubt he spent more money on it than before.  I heard of many improvements every year.

And Richard was now a man of wealth, so much so that people talked about him; and the newspapers said, in talking about real-estate, or investments, or institutions of charity—­“When such men as Richard Vandermarck allow their names to appear, we may be sure,” etc., etc.  He was now the head of the firm, and one of the first business men of the city.  He seemed a great deal older than he was; thirty-seven is young to occupy the place he held.

Such a parti could not be let alone entirely.  His course was certainly discouraging, and it needs tough hopes to live on nothing.  But stranger things had happened; more obdurate men had yielded; and unappropriated loveliness hoped on.  The story of an early attachment was afloat in connection with his name.  I don’t know whether I was made to play a part in it or not.

I saw him, perhaps, twice a year, not oftener.  His manner was always, to me, peculiarly grave and kind; to every one, practical and unpretending.  I had many letters from him, particularly when I was away on journeys.  He seemed always to want to know exactly where I was, and to feel a care of me, though his letters never went beyond business matters, and advice about things I did not understand.