nonentity. She heard no
question he asked; she answered no remark he made. Kind or reproachful
words fell alike upon her consciousness, and she made no sign of being
touched by them; for to Antony she had ceased even to pretend to be an
angel.

In this abandonment of her duty there was but one hopeful sign--she
never neglected herself or her appearance. Whenever she permitted
Antony to see her she was beautifully dressed. Her black and white
garments were of the loveliest materials, and were so made and worn as
to give an air of plaintive pathos and elegance to all her movements.
Every day Antony, furtively watching her going out and her coming in,
was touched and smitten afresh by loveliness so near and dear to him,
and yet so far beyond his power to influence. And yet, every day he
grew more hopeless, for Rose's sin was now very different from what it
had been. Her temptation to drink had been in his sight a deformity, a
disease, a calamity, but while Rose sinned against her will he did not
call it a sin; he was as ready to forgive as she was to be sorry. But
this indulgence of a defiant temper in the face of her actual
transgression, was a sin having its origin in _the will_; and it was,
therefore, in all its essence and results devilish and sorrow-making.

Towards the close of this unhappy summer a lady in the vicinity gave a
masked dance, and Antony and Rose received invitations. Antony
regarded them as mere courtesies, for they were still in mourning, and
it was hardly possible Rose would deny and defy all her summer
attitude by accepting them. As she was passing him in the hall he
said, "Rose, Mrs. Lawson has sent us invitations to her mask dance. Of
course they are merely complimentary."

There was no answer.

"Mrs. Lawson knows we are in mourning; and besides, we may be in the
city before the twentieth."

Rose was leisurely walking upstairs, but she heard the words, and a
sudden resolve to cap all her contradictions by going to the dance
entered her mind. It gave her such a fillip of mischievous pleasure as
she had not felt for a long time: and the following day she went into
New York and bought what she desired for the occasion. Antony sent a
polite refusal and thought no more of the matter. Indeed, on the day
before the dance, he began to prepare for a return to the city; and on
the twentieth he went into New York to make arrangements for the
continuance of his lease, as his own house was not finished.