she is likewise
attracted by the mighty Senator's wealth, and national importance, and
English ancestry, and future expectations; and for such reasons leans
matrimonially towards the Honorable Archibald, who is thirty years
older than Jerome, but thirty years richer and thirty years greater.
Between two fires Clara meanwhile keeps to the letter of the law with
Jerome, and holds out in ambuscade _le pot au lait_ to the Honorable
Archibald.

A closer acquaintance with the interior circuit of these unwanted
surroundings, so delicately refined, so distinctly aristocratic, so
far above her own poor world, and yet withal, so unsatisfying and so
"over-charged with surfeiting," developed to Mell the startling fact
that a life spent in incessant amusement not only soon ceases to
amuse, but becomes, in process of time, a devouring conflict with
_ennui_. She recalled with a sense of wondering comprehension the Arab
proverb: "All sunshine makes the desert."

Another thing, these women at ease, with nothing in the world to do,
Mell was thunderstruck to discover, were the hardest worked people she
had ever known, striving each on a daily battle-ground of dawdling,
dressing, and pleasure. Seeking after some personal end, some empty
honor, or some favorite phantom just out of reach. What bickering and
strife; what small conspiracies; what canker at the roots and stunting
in the fruit; what Guelph and Ghibbeline factions in the midst of all
this music, and dancing, and laughter! The same amount of time spent
in a good cause, Mell's long head could not but realize, would ease
the rack, plant many a blade of corn, staunch many a bleeding wound,
wipe the death drops from many a ghastly brow, lift up heaps of fallen
heroes prone on stony plains, and plant the standard of the cross on
many a benighted shore. Outside, Mell had yearned towards this
stronghold of the rich, as a place where there was plenty of room for
growth and happiness: inside, she discovered with astonishment and a
groan, that there was plenty of room there for dullness and
unhappiness as well. Idleness without repose, leisure and no ease,
tears and no time to shed them--on every side, and unexpected dry-rot
in the substance of things, she had pictured to her own fancy as fair,
and only fair.

"Then," interrogated Mell of her conscious Ego, "if not here, where
dwelleth content?"

Mayhap, Mell, upon the rock where the hawks nest, or in that haven
where the roving wind