He laughed naturally and pleasantly. Having confessed to what he

regarded as a ridiculous succumbing of his buoyant spirit to

atmospheric influences, he shook off the nightmare as if it had

never sat upon him.

Mabel was grave still.

"There is something weirdly oppressive in the night," she said, in a

low, awed tone. "But the burden you describe has weighed me down

since morning. While Rosa was singing, I felt suddenly removed from

you by a horrid gulf. What if all this should be the preparation to

us for some impending danger?"

"Sweet! these are unwholesome vapors of the imagination. Nothing can

be a disaster that leaves us to one another," was the text of

Frederic's fond soothing; and by the time Mrs. Sutton descended from

her chamber of meditation, to remind Imogene that the seeds of ague

and fever lurked in the river-fogs, the couple from the piazza came

into the lighted parlor, all smiles and animation, wondering,

jocosely, what had become of the recent occupants of the apartment.

Neither reappeared until breakfast-time next morning. Rosa was like

freshly-poured champagne, in sweet and sparkle. Alfred, rueful and

limp, as if the dripping clouds that verified Mabel's prediction had

soaked him all night. He was dry and comfortable--to carry out the

figure--within twenty minutes after his beloved fluttered, like a

tame canary, into the chair next his own--in five more, was more

truly her slave, living in, and upon her smiles--adoring her very

caprices as he had never admired another woman's virtues--than he

had been prior to the brief, but tempestuous scene over night. She

was the life of the party assembled in the dining-room. Imogene had

caught cold, walking bareheaded in the evening air, and Tom condoled

with her upon her influenza and sore-throat too sincerely to do

justice to the rest of his friends and his breakfast. Mr. Aylett was

never talkative, and his unvarying, soulless politeness to all

produced the conserving effect upon chill and low spirits that the

atmosphere of a refrigerator does upon whatever is placed within it.

Mrs. Sutton's motherly heart was yearning pityingly over the lovers

who were soon to be sundered, while Mabel's essay at cheerful

equanimity imposed upon nobody's credulity. Frederic comported

himself like a man--the more courageously because the host's cold

eye was upon him, and he surmised that sighs and sentimentality

would meet very scant indulgence in that quarter. Moreover, he was

not so unreasonable as to descry insupportable hardships in this

parting. By agreement with Mr. Aylett and his sister, he was, if all

went prosperously, to revisit Ridgeley at the end of six weeks, when

his design was to entreat his betrothed to name the wedding day. The

prospect might well support him under the present trial. He bore

Rosa's badinage gallantly, tossing back sprightly and telling

rejoinders that called forth the smiling applause of the auditors,

and commanded her respectful recognition of him as a foeman worthy

of her steel.




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