"Why not? Like 'the boy, Billie,' he is still 'young and tender.'"
"Nobody would be unkind to Roger," persists the Boodie, unmoved. "And besides, when he was going away he told me he would be back on New Year's Day, and Roger never told a lie."
"'He will return, I know him well,'" quotes Mr. Browne.
This quotation is thrown away upon the Boodie.
"Yes, he will," she says, in all good faith. "He will be here, I know, to-morrow week. I am going to keep the present I have for him, until then. I'm afraid I won't be able to keep it any longer," says the Boodie, regretfully, "because – "
She hesitates.
"Because it wouldn't let you. I know what it is, it is chocolate creams," says Dicky Browne, making this unlucky speech triumphantly.
It is too much! The bare mention of these sweetmeats, fraught as they are to her with bitterest memories, awake a long slumbering grief within Dulce's breast. Fretted by her interview with Stephen; sore at heart because of the child's persistent allusion to her absent cousin, this last stab, this mention of the curious cause of their parting, quite overcomes her.
Putting up her hands to her face, she rises precipitately to her feet, and then, unable to control herself, bursts into tears.
"Dulce! what is it?" exclaims Portia, going quickly to her, and encircling her with her arms. Stephen, too, makes a step forward, and then stops abruptly.
"It is nothing – nothing," sobs Dulce, struggling with her emotion; and then, finding the conflict vain, and that grief has fairly conquered her, she lays down her arms, and clinging to Portia, whispers audibly, with all the unreasoning sorrow of a tired child, "I want Roger."
Even as she makes it, the enormity of her confession comes home to her, and terrifies her. Without daring to cast a glance at Stephen, who is standing rigid and white as death against the mantelpiece, she slips out of Portia's arms and escapes from the room.
Another awkward pause ensues. Decidedly this Christmas Eve is not a successful one. To tell the truth, everyone is very much frightened, and is wondering secretly how Stephen will take it. When the silence has become positively unbearable, Sir Mark rises to the situation.
"That is just like Dulce," he says – and really the amount of feigned amusement he throws into his tone is worthy of all admiration; though to be quite honest I must confess it imposes upon nobody – "when she is out of spirits she invariably asks for somebody on whom she is in the habit of venting her spleen. Poor Roger! he is well out of it to-night, I think. We have all noticed, have we not," turning, with abject entreaty in his eyes, to every one in the room except Stephen, "that Dulce has been very much depressed during the last hour?"
"Yes, we have all noticed that," says Portia, hurriedly, coming nobly to his assistance.
Dicky Browne, stooping towards her, whispers, softly:
"Quoth Hudibras – 'It is in vain,
I see, to argue 'gainst the grain!'"
"I don't understand," says Portia; just because she doesn't want to.
"Don't you? – well, you ought. Can't you see that, in spite of her determination to hate Roger, she loves him a thousand times better than that fellow over there? – and I'm very glad of it," winds up Dicky, viciously, who has always sorely missed Roger, and, though when with him quarrelled from dawn to dewy eve, he still looks upon him as the one friend in the world to whom his soul cleaveth.
"Yes, I, too, have noticed her curious silence. Who could have vexed her! Was it you, Stephen?" asks Julia, who is as clever as Dicky at always saying the wrong thing.
"Not that I am aware of," replies Gower, haughtily. Calling to mind his late conversation with his betrothed, he naturally looks upon himself as the aggrieved party. All she had said then, her coldness, her petulance – worse than all, her indifference – are still fresh with him, and rankles within his breast. Coming a little more into the ruddy light of the fire, he says, slowly, addressing Portia,
"As – as Miss Blount seems rather upset about something, I think I shall not stay to dinner to-night. Will you excuse me to her?"
"Oh, do stay!" says Portia, uncertain how to act. She says this, too, in spite of a pronounced prod from Dicky Browne, who is plainly desirous of increasing the rupture between Stephen and Dulce. May not such a rupture reinstate Roger upon his former throne? Oddly enough, Dicky, who has no more perspicacity than an owl, has arranged within himself that Roger would be as glad to renew his old relations with Dulce as she would be to renew hers with him.
"There are other things that will take me home to-night, irrespective of Dulce," says Stephen, smiling upon Portia, and telling his lie valiantly. "Good night, Miss Vibart."
And then he bids adieu to the others, quite composedly, though his brain is on fire with jealousy, not even omitting the children. Sir Mark and Dicky, feeling some vague compassion for him, go with him to the hall door, and there, having bidden him a hearty farewell, send him on his way.
"I give you my word," says Dicky Browne, confidentially detaining Sir Mark, forcibly, "we haven't had a happy day since she engaged herself to Gower; I mean since Roger's departure. Look here, Gore, it is my opinion she doesn't care that for him," with an emphatic and very eloquent snap of his fingers.
"For once in my life, Dicky, I entirely agree with you," says Sir Mark, gloomily.
CHAPTER XXII
"Sir, You are very welcome to our house:
It must appear in other ways than words,
Therefore I scant this breathing courtesy."
– Shakespeare.
From Christmas Day to New Year's Day we all know is but a week – but what a week it is! For my part I think this season of supposed jollity the most uncomfortable and forlorn of any in the year. During all these seven interminable days the Boodie still clings to her belief in Roger, and vows he will surely return before the first day of '82 shall have come to an end. It is very nearly at an end now; the shadows have fallen long ago; the night wind has arisen; the snow that all day long has been falling slowly and steadily, still falls, as if quite determined never again to leave off.
They are all sitting in the library, it being considered a snugger room on such a dreary evening that the grander drawing-room. Stephen Gower, who has just come in, is standing by the centre-table with his back to it, and is telling them some little morsel of scandal about a near neighbor. It is a bare crumb, yet it is received with avidity and gratitude, and much laughter, so devoid of interest have been all the other hours of the day.
Nobody quite understands how it now is with Dulce and Stephen. That they have patched up their late quarrel is apparent to everybody, and as far as an ordinary eye can see, they are on as good terms with each other as usual.
Just now she is laughing even more merrily than the rest at his little story, when the door opens, and Sir Christopher and Fabian enter together.
Sir Christopher is plainly very angry, and is declaring in an extremely audible voice that "he will submit to it no longer;" he furthermore announces that he has "seen too much of it," whatever "it" may be, and that for the future he "will turn over a very different leaf." I wonder how many times in the year this latter declaration is made by everybody?
Fabian, who is utterly unmoved by his vehemence, laying his hand upon his uncle's shoulder, leads him up to the fireplace and into the huge arm-chair, that is his perpetual abiding-place.
"What is it?" asks Sir Mark, looking up quickly.
"Same old story," says Fabian, in a low voice, with a slight shrug of his shoulders. "Slyme. Drink. Accounts anyhow. And tipsy insolence, instead of proper explanation." As Fabian finishes, he draws his breath hastily, as though heartily sick and tired of the whole business.
Now that he is standing within the glare of the fire, one can see how altered he is of late. His cheeks are sunken, his lips pale. There is, too, a want of energy about him, a languor, a listlessness, that seems to have grown upon him with strange rapidity, and which suggests the possibility that life has become rather a burden than a favor.
If I say he looks as dead tired as a man might look who has been for many hours engaged in a labor trying both to soul and body, you will, perhaps, understand how Fabian looks now to the eyes that are gazing wistfully upon him from out the semi-darkness.
Moving her gown to one side, Portia (impelled to this action by some impulsive force) says, in a low tone:
"Come and sit here, Fabian," motioning gently to the seat beside her.
But, thanking her with great courtesy, he declines her invitation, and, with an unchanged face, goes on with his conversation with Sir Mark.
Portia, flushing hotly in the kindly dark, shrinks back within herself, and linking her fingers tightly together, tries bravely to crush the mingled feelings of shame and regret that rise within her breast.
"I can stand almost anything myself, I confess, but insolence," Sir Mark is saying, à propos of the intoxicated old secretary. "It takes it out of one so. I have put up with the most gross carelessness rather than change any man, but insolence from that class is insufferable. I suppose," says Sir Mark, meditatively, shifting his glass from his left to his right eye, "it is because one can't return it."
"One can dismiss the fellow, though," says Sir Christopher, still fuming. "And go Slyme shall. After all my kindness to him, too, to speak as he did to-night! The creature is positively without gratitude."
"Don't regret that," says Dicky Browne, sympathetically. "You are repining because he declines to notice your benefits; but think of what Wordsworth says —
'I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds,
With coldness still returning;
Alas! the gratitude of men
Has oftener left me mourning.'
Look here, Sir Christopher, my experience is, that if once you do a fellow a good turn he'll stick to you through life, and make you feel somehow as if he belonged to you, and that isn't pleasant, is it?"
Dicky pauses. Wordsworth is his strong point, and freely he quotes and misquotes him on all occasions. Indeed, I am of the opinion he is the only poet Dicky ever read in his life, and that because he was obliged to.
"I have done with Slyme," goes on Sir Christopher, hotly. "Yes, forever. Now, not a word, Fabian; when my mind is made up (as you all know) it is made up, and nothing can alter it." This is just what they do not all know. "As for you," continues Sir Christopher, indignantly, addressing himself solely to Fabian, "you plead for that miserable old sot out of nothing but sheer obstinacy – not because you like him. Now, do you like him? Come now, I defy you to say it."
Fabian laughs slightly.
"There, I knew it!" exclaims Sir Christopher, triumphantly, though Fabian in reality has said nothing; "and as for him, he positively detests you. What did he say just now? – that he – "
"Oh, never mind that," says Fabian, poking the fire somewhat vigorously.
"Do let us hear it," says Julia, in her usual lisping manner. "Horrid old man; I am quite afraid of him, he looks so like a gnome, or – or – one of those ugly things the Germans write about. What did he say of dear Fabian?"
"That he had him in his power," thunders Sir Christopher, angrily. "That he could make or unmake him, as the fancy seized him, and so on. Give you my honor," says Sir Christopher, almost choking with rage, "it was as much as ever I could do to keep my hands off the fellow!"
Portia, sinking further into her dark corner, sickens with apprehension at these words. Suspicion, that now, alas! has become a certainty, is crushing her. Perhaps before this she has had her doubts – vague doubts, indeed, and blessed in the fact that they may admit of contradiction. But now —now—
What was it Slyme had said? That he could either "make or unmake him," that he "had him in his power." Does Slyme, then, know the – the truth about him? Was it through fear of the secretary that Fabian had acted as his defender, supporting him against Sir Christopher's honest judgment? How quickly he had tried to turn the conversation; how he had seemed to shrink from deeper investigation of Slyme's impertinence. All seems plain to her, and with her supposed knowledge comes a pain, too terrible almost to be borne in secret.
Fabian, in the meantime, had seated himself beside Julia, and is listening to some silly remarks emanated by her. The Boodie, who is never very far from Fabian when he is in the room, is sitting on his knee with her arms around his neck.
"Come here, Boodie," says Dicky Browne, insinuatingly. "You used to say you loved me."
"So I do," says the Boodie, in fond remembrance of the biggest doll in Christendom. "But – "
She hesitates.
"'I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not Fabian more,'" parodies Mr. Browne, regretfully. "Well, I forgive you. But I thought it was Roger on whom you had set your young affections. By the by, he has disappointed you, hasn't he? Here is New Year's Day, and he has not returned to redeem his promise."
"He will come yet," says the Boodie, undauntedly.
"'He will return; I know him well,'" again quotes Mr. Browne; "that's your motto, I suppose, like the idiotic young woman in the idiotic song. Well, I admire faith myself; there's nothing like it."
"Don't mind him," says Fabian, tenderly, placing his arm round the discomfited Boodie, and pressing her pretty blonde head down upon his breast. "I don't understand him, so, of course, you don't."
"But why?" says Dicky Browne, who is evidently bent on mischief; "she has a great deal more brains than you have. Don't be aspersed by him, Boodie; you can understand me, I know, but I dare say I can soar higher than he can follow, and what I say to you contains 'thoughts that lie beyond the reach of his few words of English speech.'"
"Thank you," says Fabian.
The Boodie is plainly puzzled.
"I don't know what you mean," she says to Dicky; "I only know this," defiantly, "that I am certain Roger will return to-night, even if I am in bed when he comes."
The words are hardly out of her mouth when the door opens and somebody appears upon the threshold. This somebody has had an evident tussle with the butler outside, who, perhaps, would fain have announced him, but having conquered the king of the servants' hall, the somebody advances slowly until he is midway between the centre of the room and the direct glare of the firelight.
Every one grows very silent. It is as though a spell has fallen upon them all; all, that is, except Dulce. She, rising hurriedly from her seat, goes toward the stranger.
"It is Roger!" she cries suddenly, in so glad a voice, in a voice so full of delight and intense thankfulness, that every one is struck by it.
Then Roger is in their midst, a very sunburnt Roger, but just at first his eyes are only upon Dulce, and after a little bit it becomes apparent to everybody that it is Dulce alone he sees; and that she is in fact the proud possessor of all the sight he owns.
He has taken between both his the two little trembling hands she has extended to him, and is pressing them warmly, openly, without the slightest idea of concealing the happiness he feels in being at her side again.
A little happy smile wreathes her lips as she sees this, and with her white fingers she smooths down the gray sleeve of his coat, as if he were a priceless treasure, once lost, but now restored to her again.
I think Dare likes being looked upon as a long-lost priceless treasure, because he does not move, and keeps his eyes still on her as though he would never like to remove them, and makes no objection to his sleeve being brushed up the wrong way.
"It seems like a hundred thousand years since you went away," says Dulce, with a little happy sigh, after which every one crowds around him, and he is welcomed with extreme joy into the family circle again. Indeed, the Boodie exhibits symptoms of insanity, and dances round him with a vivacity that a dervish might be proud of.
This is, of course, very delightful, specially to Stephen Gower, who is sitting glooming upon space, and devoured with something he calls disgust, but might be more generally termed the commonest form of jealousy. The others are all crowding round Roger, and are telling him, in different language, but in one breath, how welcome he is.
This universal desire to light mythical tar-barrels in honor of the wanderer's return suggests at last to Mr. Gower the necessity of expressing his delight likewise. Rising, therefore, from his seat, he goes up to Roger, and insists on shaking him cordially by the hand. This proceeding on his part, I am bound to say, is responded to by Roger in a very niggardly manner – a manner that even undergoes no improvement when Mr. Gower expresses his overwhelming satisfaction at seeing him home again.
"We are all more pleased to see you again than we can say," declares Mr. Gower, purposely forgetful of that half-hour in the back-yard, when they had been bent on pommeling each other, and doubtless would have done so but for Sir Mark.
He says this very well indeed, and with quite an overflow of enthusiasm – perhaps rather too great an overflow; because Roger, looking at him out of his dark eyes, decides within himself that this whilom friend of his is now his bitterest enemy, hating him with all the passionate hatred of a jealous heart.
The Boodie is in a state of triumph bordering on distraction. "She had always said he (Roger) would return on New Year's Day; she had believed in his promise; she had known he would not disappoint," and so on. Every now and then she creeps up to the returned wanderer, to surreptitiously pat his sleeve or his cheek, looking unutterable things all the time. Finally she crowns herself by pressing into his hand a neatly tied little square parcel, with a whisper to the effect that it is his Christmas-box, that she has been keeping for him all the week.
At this Roger takes her up in his arms and kisses her warmly, and tells her he has "something lovely" for her up-stairs in his portmanteau, and that after dinner she must come up with him to his room, and they will unpack it together.
This announcement is very near being the cause of bloodshed. Jacky and Pussy, who have been listening intently to every word of it, now glare fiendishly upon the favored Boodie, and sullenly, but with fell determination, make a movement toward her. In another moment all might have been over, and the poor Boodie a mangled corse, but that Roger, coming hurriedly to the rescue, declares there are two other "lovely things" in his portmanteau, suitable to the requirements of Pussy and her brother, whereon peace is once more restored.
To Sir Christopher this unexpected return of Roger is an indescribable blessing. His mind at once rises above all things disagreeable; Slyme and his impertinence fade out of remembrance, at least for the present. He sees and thinks of nothing but his handsome lad, who has returned to him safe and sound. There is quite a confusion indeed just at first; every one is talking together, and nobody is dreaming of listening to anybody. All Dulce's heart seems to go out to Roger, as she marks the glad light that brightens his dark eyes as he returns Fabian's greeting.
After a little while every one sobers down, and Roger, who is looking brown and healthy, if a trifle thin, seats himself besides Dulce upon the small ottoman, that, as a rule, is supposed to be only equal to the support of one individual at a time. As neither Dulce nor Roger, however, appear in the very slightest degree uncomfortable upon it, a doubt is at once and forever afterwards thrown upon this supposition. Once only a little hitch occurs that throws a slight damp upon their content. Roger, feeling the Boodie's offering growing warm within his hands, mechanically opens it, even while carrying on his smiling tete-a-tete with Dulce, but soon the smiles vanish! There, on his open palm, lies a very serpent, a noisome reptile, a box of chocolate creams!
A most improper word escapes him. He precipitately drops the box (it is a very pretty box with a lovely young lady on the cover), chocolates and all, behind the ottoman, where they fall softly, being in a high state of decay and damp, and looks gloomily at Dulce. She responds with fervor; she is, indeed, perhaps, a trifle the gloomiest, and for a moment silence is unbroken.
Then they sigh, then they look again, then they try to pretend that nothing has happened to disturb them, and presently so far succeed that conversation once more falls into an easy channel and flows on unbrokenly.
She is smiling up at him in a happy fashion, long unknown to her, and he is looking down at her with such an amount of satisfaction and content in his gaze as cannot be mistaken. One might easily believe he has forgotten the manner of their parting, and is now regarding her as his own particular possession.
When this sort of thing has gone on for five minutes, Gower, feeling he can stand it no longer, draws his breath quickly, and going over to the small ottoman seats himself upon a low chair, quite close to his betrothed; this effort he makes to assert his position, with all the air of a man who is determined to do or die. Her fan is lying on her knee. Taking it up, with a defiant glance at Roger, he opens it, and trifles with it idly, in a sort of proprietary fashion.
Yet even while he does it, his heart is sad within him and filled with a dire foreboding. The thought that he is unwelcome, that his presence at this moment is probably being regarded in the light of an intrusion by these two, so near to him, fills him with bitterness; he is almost afraid to look at Dulce, lest he shall read in her eyes a cold disapprobation of his conduct in thus interrupting her tete-à-tete, when to his surprise a little hand is laid upon his arm, and Dulce's voice asks him a question that instantly draws him into the conversation.
She is smiling very kindly at him; more kindly indeed than she has done for many days; she is in such a happy mood, in such wonderfully gay, bright spirits, that all the world seems good to her, and it becomes necessary to her to impart her joyousness to all around. Every one must be happy to-night, she tells herself; and so, as I have said before, she smiles on Gower, and pats him gently on the arm, and raises him at once to the seventh heaven out of the very lowest depths of despair.
The change is so sudden that Stephen naturally loses his head a little. He draws his chair even nearer to the ottoman. He determines to outsit Roger. In five minutes – in half an hour, at all events – the fellow will be obliged to go and speak to somebody else, if only for decency's sake. And then there is every chance that the dressing-bell will soon ring. Dulce's extreme delight, so innocently expressed at her cousin's return had certainly given him a severe shock, but now there is no reason why he should not remain victor, and keep the prize he had been at such pains to win.
All is going well. Even with Roger freshly returned by her side, she has shown kindness to him, she has smiled upon him with a greater warmth than usual. I daresay she is determined to show her cousin her preference for him (Stephen). This thought makes him positively glow with hope and pride. By guarding against any insidious advances on the part of the enemy, by being ever at Dulce's side to interpose between her and any softly worded sentimental converse, he may conquer and drive the foe from off the field.
Not once this evening until the friendly bedroom candlesticks are produced will he quit her side – never until —
In one moment his designs are frustrated. All his plans are laid low. The voice of Julia breaks upon his ear like a death-knell. She, being fully convinced in her own mind that "poor dear Stephen" is feeling himself in the cold, and is, therefore, inconceivably wretched, determines, with most mistaken kindness, to come to the rescue.
"Stephen, may I ask you to do something for me?" she says, in her sweetest tones and with her most engaging smile.
"You may," says Mr. Gower, as in duty bound, and in an awful tone.
"Then do come and help me to wind this wool," says Julia, still in her most fetching manner, holding out for his inspection about as much scarlet wool as it would take an hour to wind, doing it at one's utmost speed.
With a murderous expression Stephen crosses the room to where she is sitting – at the very antipodes from where he would be, that is, from Dulce – and drops sullenly into a chair at her side.
"Poor dear fellow, already he is feeling injured and out of spirits," says Julia to herself, regarding him with furtive compassion.
"Beast! she is in a plot against me!" says Mr. Gower to his own soul, feeling he could willingly strangle her with her red wool.
So do we misunderstand the feelings and motives of our best friends in this world.
Dulce and Roger thus left to their own resources, continue to be openly and unrestrainedly happy. Every now and then a laugh from one or other of them comes to the stricken Stephen, sitting on his stool of repentance, winding the endless wool. By and by it becomes worse when no laugh is heard, and when the two upon the ottoman seem to be conversing in a tone that would be a whisper if it dared. To Gower it is already a whisper, and frenzy ensues.
Wild thoughts arise within his breast; something it seems to him must be done, and that soon. Shall he throw this vile wool, this scarlet abomination, in Julia's placid face, and with a naughty word defy her to hold him prisoner any longer? Or shall he fling himself bodily upon Roger and exterminate him? Or shall he publicly upbraid Dulce with her perfidy? No; this last is too mild a course, and something tells him would not create the havoc that alone can restore peace to his bosom. Shall he —
Oh, blessed sound, the dressing bell. Now she must tear herself away from this new-found cousin and go up-stairs – doubtless to array herself in her choicest garments for his delectation later on. He grinds his teeth again, as this thought comes to torment him.
Regardless of Julia's cry of horror and remonstrance, he drops the wool and rises to his feet, leaving it a hopeless mass on the carpet. He makes a step in Dulce's direction, but she, too, has got up, and before he can reach her has disappeared through the doorway, and is half-way up the old oak staircase.
He takes her in to dinner, certainly, later on, but finds, on seating himself, that Roger, by some unaccountable chance, has secured the seat on her other side. He finds out, too, presently, that she is devoting all her conversation to her cousin, and seems curiously inquisitive about his travels. She appears indeed positively athirst for information on this subject; and the soup is as naught, and the fish as sawdust, in the eyes of Mr. Gower.
"You were in Egypt, too? Tell me all about it. I have always so longed to hear about Egypt," says Dulce, with soft animation.
"Egypt?" says Roger, with some natural hesitation as to how to begin; Egypt is a big place, and just now seems a long way off. "Well, there is a good deal of it, you know; what do you want to know most?"
"Whether you enjoyed yourself – whether you were happy there?" replies she, promptly. I daresay it isn't quite the answer he had expected, because he looks at her for half a minute or so very intently.
"Happy? That includes such a great deal," he says, at length. "It is a very interesting country beyond doubt, and there are Pyramids, you know; you heard of 'em once or twice, I shouldn't wonder; and there are beggars and robbers, and more sand than I ever saw in my life, and —No," with a sudden, almost startling change of tone, "I was not happy there, or anywhere else, since last I saw you!"
"Robbers!" says Dulce, hastily, with a rather forced little laugh; "regular brigands, do you mean, going about in hordes, with tunics, and crimson sashes, and daggers. How could one be happy with such terrible people turning up at every odd corner? I daresay," trifling nervously with a wine glass, "it would make one often wish to be at home again."
"I often wished to be at home again." Somehow his manner gives her to understand that the gentlemen in crimson sashes had nothing whatever to do with this wish.
"I fancied brigands belonged exclusively to Greece and Italy," says Dulce, still intent upon the wine-glass. "Are they very picturesque, and do they really go about dressed in all the colors of the rainbow?"
Plainly Miss Blount has been carefully studying the highly-colored prints in the old school-books, in which the lawless Greeks are depicted as the gayest of the gay.
"They are about the most ill-looking ruffians it has ever been my fate to see," says Mr. Dare, indifferently.
"How disappointing! I don't believe you liked being in Egypt after all," says Dulce, who cannot resist returning to tread once more the dangerous ground.
"I think one place is about as good as another," says Mr. Dare, discontentedly, "and about as bad. One shouldn't expect too much, you know."
"Perhaps it would be as well if one didn't expect anything," says Dulce.
"Better, no doubt."
"You take a very discontented view of things; your traveling has made you cynical, I think."
"Not my traveling?"
This is almost a challenge, and she accepts it.
"What then?" she asks, a little coldly.
"Shall I tell you?" retorts he, with an unpleasant smile. "Well, no; I will spare you; it would certainly not interest you. Let us return to our subject; you are wondering why I am not in raptures about Egypt; I am wondering why I should be."
"No; I was finding fault with you because you gave me the impression that all places on earth are alike indifferent to you."
"Perhaps that is true. I don't defend myself. But I know there was a time when certain scenes were dear to me."
"There was?"
"Yes; I've outgrown it, I suppose; or else memory, rendering all things bitter, is to blame. It is our cruelest enemy, I dare say we might all be pretty comfortable forever if we could only 'Quaff the kind Nepenthe, and forget our lost Lenores!'"