“I would not care, nor dare, to venture—­”

“You are a very baby yet.  I am two years older than you.  But indeed you are progressing with some rapidity.  What about George Hyde?”

“You said he had gone out of town.”

“And I am glad of it.  He will not now be insinuating himself with violets, and compelling you to take walks with him on the Battery.  Oh, Cornelia! you see I am not to be put out of your confidence.  Why did you not tell me?”

“You have given me no opportunity; and, as you know all, why should I say any more about it?”

“Cornelia, my dear companion, I fear you are inclined to concealment and to reticence, qualities a young girl should not cultivate—­I am now speaking for dear Sister Maria Beroth—­and I hope you will carefully consider the advantages you will derive from cultivating a more open disposition.”

“You are making a mockery of the good Sisters; and I do not wish to hear you commit such a great fault.  Indeed, I would be pleased to return to their peaceful care again.”

“And wear the little linen cap and collar, and all the other simplicities?  Cornelia!  Cornelia!  You are as fond as I am of French fashions and fripperies.  Let us be honest, if we die for it.  And you may as well tell me all your little coquetries with George Hyde; for I shall be sure to find them out.  Now I am going home; for I must look after the tea-table.  But you will not be sorry, for it will leave you free to think of—­”

“Please, Arenta!”

“Very well.  I will have ‘considerations.’  Good-bye!”

Then the door closed, and Cornelia was left alone.  But the atmosphere of the room was charged with Arenta’s unrest, and a feeling of disappointment was added to it.  She suddenly realized that her lover’s absence from the city left a great vacancy.  What were all the thousands in its streets, if he was not there?  She might now indeed remove her frame from the window; if Hyde was an impossibility, there was no one else she wished to see pass.  And her heart told her the report was a true one; she did not doubt for a moment Arenta’s supposition, that he had gone to Hyde Manor.  But the thought made her lonely.  Something, she knew not what, had altered her life.  She had a new strange happiness, new hopes, new fears and new wishes; but they were not an unmixed delight; for she was also aware of a vague trouble, a want that nothing in her usual duties satisfied:—­in a word, she had crossed the threshold of womanhood and was no longer a girl,

“Singing alone in the morning of life,
 In the happy morning of life, and May.”

CHAPTER IV

THROWING THINGS INTO CONFUSION