of children in the street, and the gay
arias of a mocking-bird singing in the open window of the next house. So
they sat together through the long, still afternoon of the last day.

No one in Rouen found that afternoon particularly enlivening. Even Mrs.
Tanberry gave way to the common depression, and, once more, her
doctrine of cheerfulness relegated to the ghostly ranks of the purely
theoretical, she bowed under the burden of her woe so far as to sing
"Methought I Met a Damsel Fair" (her of the bursting sighs) at the
piano. Whenever sadness lay upon her soul she had acquired the habit
of resorting to this unhappy ballad; today she sang it four times. Mr.
Carewe was not at home, and had announced that though he intended to
honor the evening meal by his attendance, he should be away for the
evening itself; as comment upon which statement Mrs. Tanberry had
offered ambiguously the one word, "Amen!" He was stung to no reply, and
she had noted the circumstance as unusual, and also that he had appeared
to labor with the suppression of a keen excitement, which made him
anxious to escape from her sharp little eyes; an agitation for which
she easily accounted when she recalled that he had seen Vanrevel on the
previous evening. Mr. Carewe had kept his promise to preserve the peace,
as he always kept it when the two met on neutral ground, but she had
observed that his face showed a kind of hard-leashed violence whenever
he had been forced to breathe the air of the same room with his enemy,
and that the thing grew on him.

Miss Betty exhibited not precisely a burning interest in the adventure
of the Damsel Fair, wandering out of the room during the second
rendition, wandering back again, and once more away. She had moved
about the house in this fashion since early morning, wearing what Mamie
described as a "peak-ed look." White-faced and restless, with distressed
eyes, to which no sleep had come in the night, she could not read; she
could no more than touch her harp; she could not sleep; she could not
remain quiet for three minutes together. Often she sank into a chair
with an air of languor and weariness, only to start immediately out of
it and seek some other part of the house, or to go and pace the garden.
Here, in the air heavy with roses and tremulous with June, as she walked
rapidly up and down, late in the afternoon, at the time when the faraway
farm-bells were calling men from the fields to supper, the climax of her
restl