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.