ium, but with too vague an outline for even my adventurous
conjectures to read the hieroglyphic that it presented.

All at once, it occurred to me how very absurd was my behavior in thus
tormenting myself with crazy hypotheses as to what was going on within
that drawing-room, when it was at my option to be personally present
there, My relations with Zenobia, as yet unchanged,--as a familiar
friend, and associated in the same life-long enterprise,--gave me the
right, and made it no more than kindly courtesy demanded, to call on
her. Nothing, except our habitual independence of conventional rules
at Blithedale, could have kept me from sooner recognizing this duty.
At all events, it should now be performed.

In compliance with this sudden impulse, I soon found myself actually
within the house, the rear of which, for two days past, I had been so
sedulously watching. A servant took my card, and, immediately
returning, ushered me upstairs. On the way, I heard a rich, and, as it
were, triumphant burst of music from a piano, in which I felt Zenobia's
character, although heretofore I had known nothing of her skill upon
the instrument. Two or three canary-birds, excited by this gush of
sound, sang piercingly, and did their utmost to produce a kindred
melody. A bright illumination streamed through, the door of the front
drawing-room; and I had barely stept across the threshold before
Zenobia came forward to meet me, laughing, and with an extended hand.

"Ah, Mr. Coverdale," said she, still smiling, but, as I thought, with a
good deal of scornful anger underneath, "it has gratified me to see the
interest which you continue to take in my affairs! I have long
recognized you as a sort of transcendental Yankee, with all the native
propensity of your countrymen to investigate matters that come within
their range, but rendered almost poetical, in your case, by the refined
methods which you adopt for its gratification. After all, it was an
unjustifiable stroke, on my part,--was it not?--to let down the window
curtain!"

"I cannot call it a very wise one," returned I, with a secret
bitterness, which, no doubt, Zenobia appreciated. "It is really
impossible to hide anything in this world, to say nothing of the next.
All that we ought to ask, therefore, is, that the witnesses of our
conduct, and the speculators on our motives, should be capable of
taking the highest view which the circumstances of the case may admit.
So much being