“Pauline, are you going away?  We are just ready start.”

If I had had any presence of mind I should have made an excuse, and gone to my own room for a moment, and taken my chance of getting to the floor above; but I suppose he would have forestalled me.  I could not command a single word, but turned back and followed him.  As we got into the carriage, the voices and the laughing really seemed to madden me.  Driving away from the house, I never shall forget the sensation of growing heaviness at my heart; it seemed to be turning into lead.  I glanced back at the closed windows of his room and wondered if he saw us, and if he thought that I was happy.

The length of that day!  The glare of that sun!  The chill of that unnatural wind!  Every moment seemed to me an hour.  I can remember with such distinctness the whole day, each thing as it happened; conversations which seemed so senseless, preparations which seemed so endless.  The taste of the things I tried to eat:  the smell of the grass on which we sat, and the pine-trees above our heads:  the sound of fire blazing under the teakettle, and the pained sensation of my eyes when the smoke blew across into our faces:  the hateful vibration of Mary Leighton’s laugh:  all these things are unnaturally vivid to me at this day.

I don’t know what the condition of my brain must have been, to have received such an exaggerated impression of unimportant things.

“What can I do for you, Miss Pauline?” said Kilian, throwing himself down on the grass at my feet.  I could not sit down for very impatience, but was walking restlessly about, and was now standing for a moment by a great tree under which the table had been spread.  It was four o’clock, and there was only vague talk of going home; the horses had not yet been brought up, the baskets were not a quarter packed.  Every one was indolent, and a good deal tired; the gentlemen were smoking, and no one seemed in a hurry.

When Kilian said, “What can I do for you.  Miss Pauline?” I could not help saying, “Take me home.”

“Home!” cried Kilian.  “Here is somebody talking about going home.  Why, Miss Pauline, I am just beginning to enjoy myself! only look, it is but four o’clock.”

“Oh, let us stay and go home by moonlight,” cried Mary Leighton, in a little rapture.

“Would it not be heavenly!” said Henrietta.

“How about tea?” said Charlotte.  “We shall be hungry before moonlight, and there isn’t anything left to eat.”

“How material!” cried Kilian, who had eaten an enormous dinner.

“We shall all get cold,” said Sophie, who loved to be comfortable, “and the children are beginning to be very cross.”

“Small blame to them,” muttered a dissatisfied man in my ear, who had singled me out as a companion in discontent, and had pursued me with his contempt for pastoral entertainments, and for this entertainment in especial.

“Well, let the people that want to stay, stay; but let us go home,” I said, hastily.