Of course, I did not go near the library; that was understood.  After dinner, the servant brought in Mr. Langenau’s tray untouched, and Charlotte Benson started up, and ran in to see what was the matter.  Sophie went too, looking a little troubled.  I think they were both snubbed:  for ten minutes after, when I met Charlotte in the hall, she had an unusual flush upon her cheek, and Sophie I found standing at one of the parlor-windows, biting her lip, and tapping impatiently upon the carpet.  Evidently the affair was not as near its placid end as she had hoped.  She started a little when she saw me, and tried to look unruffled.

“How sultry it is this afternoon!” she said.  “Are you going up to your room to take a rest? stop in my room on your way, I want to show you those embroideries that I was telling Charlotte Benson of last night.”

“I did not hear you, and I do not know anything about them,” I said, feeling not at all affectionate.

“No?  Oh, I forgot:  it was while you and Henrietta were sitting in the library, and Charlotte and I were walking up and down the piazza while it rained.  Why, they are some heavenly sets that I got this spring from Paris—­Marshall picked them up one day at the Bon Marche—­and verily they are bon marche.  I never saw anything so cheap, and I was telling Charlotte that some of you might just as well have part of them, for I never could use the half.  Come up and look them over.”

Now I loved “heavenly sets” as well as most women, but dress was not the bait for me at that moment.  So I said my head ached and I could not look at them then, if she’d excuse me; and I went silently away to my room, not caring at all if she were pleased or not.  I disliked and distrusted her more and more every moment, and she seemed to me so mean:  for I knew all her worry came from the apprehension of what she might have to fear from Richard, not the thought of the suffering that he or that any one else endured.

It was a long afternoon, but it reached its end, after the manner of all afternoons on record, even those of Marianna.  When I came down-stairs they were all at tea and Kilian had arrived.  A more enlivening atmosphere prevailed, and the invalid was not discussed.  A drive was being canvassed.  There was an early moon, and Kilian proposed driving Tom and Jerry before the open wagon, which would carry four, through the valley-road, to be back by half-past nine or ten o’clock.

“But what am I to do,” cried Kilian, “when there are five angels, and I have only room for three?”

“Why, two will have to stay at home, according to my arithmetic,” said Charlotte, good-naturedly, “and I’ve no doubt I shall be remainder.”

“If you stay, I shall stay with you,” said Henrietta, dropping the metaphor, for metaphors, even the mildest, were beyond her reach of mind.