Belemites. By the time the letter reached
me he should be gone. Would I bear him in remembrance? He would not
forget me, and promised me an Indian idol. In eighteen months he
expected to be at home again; sooner, perhaps. P.S. Would I give
his true regards to my sister? N.B. The property might be divided
according to his grandfather's will, before his return, and he wanted
to be out of the way for sundry reasons, which he hoped to tell me
some day. I read the letter to Helen and Veronica. Helen laughed, and
said "Unstable as water"; but Veronica looked displeased; she closed
her eyes as if to recall him to mind, and asked Helen abruptly if she
did not like him.
"Yes; but I doubt him. With all his strength of character he has a
capacity for failure."
"I consider him a relation," I said.
"_I_ do not own him," said Veronica.
"At all events, he is not an affectionate one," Helen remarked. "You
have not heard from him in a year."
"But I knew that I should hear," I said.
"We shall _see_ him," said Veronica, "again."
I was dull after I received his letter. My youth grew dim; somehow
I felt a self-pity. I found no chance to embalm those phases of
sensation which belonged to my period, and I grew careless; Helen's
influence went with her. The observances so vital to Veronica, so
charming in her, I became utterly neglectful of. For all this a mad
longing sometimes seized me to depart into a new world, which should
contain no element of the old, least of all a reminiscence of what my
experience had made me.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Alice Morgeson sent for Aunt Merce, asking her to fulfill the promise
she had made when she was in Rosville.
With misgivings she went, stayed a month, and returned with Alice. I
felt a throe of pain when we met, which she must have seen, for she
turned pale, and the hand she had extended toward me fell by her side;
overcoming the impulse, she offered it again, but I did not take it. I
had no evidence to prove that she came to Surrey on my account; but I
was sure that such was the fact, as I was sure that there was a bond
between us, which she did not choose to break, nor to acknowledge. She
appeared as if expecting some explanation or revelation from me; but
I gave her none, though I liked her better than ever. She was
business-like and observant. Her tendencies, never romantic, were less
selfish; it was no longer society, dress, housekeeping, which absorbed
her, but a larger in
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