The Maid of Maiden Lane

"Quite. It was even scornful."

"Plenty of nice girls in Boston."

"I cannot go back to Boston."

"Why then?"

"Because Mary's cousin has told the whole affair."

"Nonsense!"

"She has. I know it. Men, whom I had been friendly with, got out of my way; women excused themselves at their homes, and did not see me on the streets. I have no doubt all Boston is talking of the affair."

"Then come back to New York. New Yorkers attend strictly to their own love affairs. Father will stand by you; and I will."

"Father will not. He called me a scoundrel, when I told him last night, and advised me to go to the frontier. Joris Van Heemskirk will not talk, but madame will chatter for him, and I could not bear to meet Doctor Moran. As for Captain Jacobus, he would invent new words and oaths to abuse me with, and Aunt Angelica would, of course, say amen to all he says;--and there are others."

"Yes, there is Lord Hyde."

"Curse him! But I intended to give him his letter--now you have burnt it."

"You intended nothing of the kind, Rem. Go away as soon as you can. I don't want to know where you go just yet. New York is impossible, and Boston is impossible. Father says go to the frontier, I say go South. What you have done, you have done; and it cannot be undone; so don't carry it about with you. And I would let women alone--they are beyond you--go in for politics."

That day Rem lingered with his sister, seeing no one else; and in the evening shadows he slipped quietly away. He was very wretched, for he really loved Mary Damer, and his disappointment was bitterly keen and humiliating. Besides which, he felt that his business efforts for two years were forfeited, and that he had the world to begin over again. Without a friend to wish him a Godspeed the wretched man went on board the Southern packet, and in her dim lonely cabin sat silent and despondent, while she fought her way through swaying curtains of rain to the open sea. Its great complaining came up through the darkness to him, and seemed to be the very voice of the miserable circumstances, that had separated and estranged his life from all he loved and desired.

This sudden destruction of all her hopes for her brother distressed Arenta. Her own marriage had been a most unfortunate one, but its misfortunes had the importance of national tragedy. She had even plucked honour to herself from the bloody tumbril and guillotine. But Rem's matrimonial failure had not one redeeming quality; it was altogether a shameful and well-deserved retribution. And she had boasted to her friends not a little of the great marriage her brother was soon to make, and even spoken of Miss Damer, as if a sisterly affection already existed between them. She could anticipate very well the smiles and shrugs, the exclamations and condolences she might have to encounter, and she was not pleased with her brother for putting her in a position likely to make her disagreeable to people.