While intent upon making out this girlish shape, I became sensible that a figure had appeared at one of the windows of the drawing-room.  There was a presentiment in my mind; or perhaps my first glance, imperfect and sidelong as it was, had sufficed to convey subtile information of the truth.  At any rate, it was with no positive surprise, but as if I had all along expected the incident, that, directing my eyes thitherward, I beheld—­like a full-length picture, in the space between the heavy festoons of the window curtains—­no other than Zenobia!  At the same instant, my thoughts made sure of the identity of the figure in the boudoir.  It could only be Priscilla.

Zenobia was attired, not in the almost rustic costume which she had heretofore worn, but in a fashionable morning-dress.  There was, nevertheless, one familiar point.  She had, as usual, a flower in her hair, brilliant and of a rare variety, else it had not been Zenobia.  After a brief pause at the window, she turned away, exemplifying, in the few steps that removed her out of sight, that noble and beautiful motion which characterized her as much as any other personal charm.  Not one woman in a thousand could move so admirably as Zenobia.  Many women can sit gracefully; some can stand gracefully; and a few, perhaps, can assume a series of graceful positions.  But natural movement is the result and expression of the whole being, and cannot be well and nobly performed unless responsive to something in the character.  I often used to think that music—­light and airy, wild and passionate, or the full harmony of stately marches, in accordance with her varying mood—­should have attended Zenobia’s footsteps.

I waited for her reappearance.  It was one peculiarity, distinguishing Zenobia from most of her sex, that she needed for her moral well-being, and never would forego, a large amount of physical exercise.  At Blithedale, no inclemency of sky or muddiness of earth had ever impeded her daily walks.  Here in town, she probably preferred to tread the extent of the two drawing-rooms, and measure out the miles by spaces of forty feet, rather than bedraggle her skirts over the sloppy pavements.  Accordingly, in about the time requisite to pass through the arch of the sliding-doors to the front window, and to return upon her steps, there she stood again, between the festoons of the crimson curtains.  But another personage was now added to the scene.  Behind Zenobia appeared that face which I had first encountered in the wood-path; the man who had passed, side by side with her, in such mysterious familiarity and estrangement, beneath my vine curtained hermitage in the tall pine-tree.  It was Westervelt.  And though he was looking closely over her shoulder, it still seemed to me, as on the former occasion, that Zenobia repelled him,—­that, perchance, they mutually repelled each other, by some incompatibility of their spheres.

This impression, however, might have been altogether the result of fancy and prejudice in me.  The distance was so great as to obliterate any play of feature by which I might otherwise have been made a partaker of their counsels.