s
wife appreciate the dignity of a countess, who, on state occasions, must
walk behind a marchioness, who must walk behind a duchess, who must walk
behind a queen? Thus you see how it was that the sovereign ladies of
Maryland thought they were doing a very condescending thing in calling
upon the young stranger whose husband had deserted her, and whose
mother and sisters-in-law had left her alone; and that her ladyship had
committed a great act of ill-breeding and impertinence in declining
their visits.

At the close of the Washington season Mrs. Brudenell and her daughters
returned to the Hall. She told her friends that her son was traveling in
Europe; but she told her daughter-in-law that she only hoped he was
doing so; that she really had not heard a word from him, and did not
know anything whatever of his whereabouts.

Mrs. Brudenell and her daughters received and paid visits; gave and
attended parties, and made the house and the neighborhood very gay in
the pleasant summer time.

Berenice did not enter into any of these amusements. She never accepted
an invitation to go out. And even when company was entertained at the
house she kept her own suite of rooms and had her meals brought to her
there. Mrs. Brudenell was excessively displeased at a course of conduct
in her daughter-in-law that would naturally give rise to a great deal of
conjecture. She expostulated with Lady Hurstmonceux; but to no good
purpose: for Berenice shrunk from company, replying to all arguments
that could be urged upon her:

"I cannot--I cannot see visitors, mamma! It is quite--quite impossible."

And then Mrs. Brudenell made a resolution, which she also kept--never to
come to Brudenell Hall for another summer until Herman should return to
his home and Berenice to her senses. And having so decided, she abridged
her stay and went away with her daughters to spend the remainder of the
summer at some pleasant watering-place in the North.

And Berenice was once more left to solitude.

Now, Lady Hurstmonceux was not naturally cold, or proud, or unsocial;
but as surely as brains can turn, and hearts break, and women die of
grief, she was crazy, heart-broken, and dying.

She turned sick at the sight of every human face, because the one dear
face she loved and longed for was not near. The pastor of the parish,
with the benevolent perseverence of a true Christian, continued to call
at the Hall long after every other human creature had ceased to v