t he had made a fool of himself to no end; she
spared neither his age nor his grief-broken spirit, in which his
will could not rise against hers. She filled the house with her rage,
screaming it out upon him; but when her fury was once spent, she began
to have some hopes from what her father had done. She no longer kept her
bed; every evening she dressed herself in the dress Beaton admired the
most, and sat up till a certain hour to receive him. She had fixed a day
in her own mind before which, if he came, she would forgive him all
he had made her suffer: the mortification, the suspense, the despair.
Beyond this, she had the purpose of making her father go to Europe; she
felt that she could no longer live in America, with the double disgrace
that had been put upon her.

Beaton rang, and while the servant was coming the insolent caprice
seized him to ask for the young ladies instead of the old man, as he had
supposed of course he should do. The maid who answered the bell, in the
place of the reluctant Irishman of other days, had all his hesitation in
admitting that the young ladies were at home.

He found Mela in the drawing-room. At sight of him she looked scared;
but she seemed to be reassured by his calm. He asked if he was not
to have the pleasure of seeing Miss Dryfoos, too; and Mela said she
reckoned the girl had gone up-stairs to tell her. Mela was in black, and
Beaton noted how well the solid sable became her rich red-blonde beauty;
he wondered what the effect would be with Christine.

But she, when she appeared, was not in mourning. He fancied that she
wore the lustrous black silk, with the breadths of white Venetian lace
about the neck which he had praised, because he praised it. Her cheeks
burned with a Jacqueminot crimson; what should be white in her face
was chalky white. She carried a plumed ostrich fan, black and soft, and
after giving him her hand, sat down and waved it to and fro slowly,
as he remembered her doing the night they first met. She had no ideas,
except such as related intimately to herself, and she had no gabble,
like Mela; and she let him talk. It was past the day when she promised
herself she would forgive him; but as he talked on she felt all her
passion for him revive, and the conflict of desires, the desire to hate,
the desire to love, made a dizzying whirl in her brain. She looked at
him, half doubting whether he was really there or not. He had never
looked so handsome, with his dream