relatives and friends. She
had more color--it was very delicately rosy--than she had had of old, in
spite of her black dress; and the effect of looking at him seemed to him
to make her eyes grow still prettier. Though sisterless now, she was not
without duties, and Benyon could easily see that life would press hard
on her unless some one should interfere. Every one regarded her as
just the person to do certain things. Every one thought she could do
everything, because she had nothing else to do. She used to read to the
blind, and, more onerously, to the deaf. She looked after other people's
children while the parents attended anti-slavery conventions.

She was coming to New York later to spend a week at her brother's, but
beyond this she didn't know what she should do. Benyon felt it to be
awkward that he should not be able, just now, to tell her; and this
had much to do with his coming to the point, for he accused himself of
having rather hung fire. Coming to the point, for Benyon, meant writing
a note to Mrs. Roy (as he must call her), in which he asked whether she
would see him if he should present himself. The missive was short; it
contained, in addition to what I have noted, little more than the remark
that he had something of importance to say to her. Her reply, which we
have just read, was prompt. Benyon designated an hour, and the next
day rang the doorbell of her big modern house, whose polished windows
seemed to shine defiance at him.

As he stood on the steps, looking up and down the straight vista of the
Fifth Avenue, he perceived that he was trembling a little, that _he_
was nervous, if she was not. He was ashamed of his agitation, and he
addressed himself a very stern reprimand. Afterwards he saw that what
had made him nervous was not any doubt of the goodness of his cause,
but his revived sense (as he drew near her) of his wife's hardness,--her
capacity for insolence. He might only break himself against that, and
the prospect made him feel helpless. She kept him waiting for a long
time after he had been introduced; and as he walked up and down her
drawing-room, an immense, florid, expensive apartment, covered with
blue satin, gilding, mirrors and bad frescos, it came over him as a
certainty that her delay was calculated. She wished to annoy him, to
weary him; she was as ungenerous as she was unscrupulous. It never
occurred to him that in spite of the bold words of her note, she, too,
might be in a tremo