nd her muslin
work! He was himself astonished and amused, but so it was. He could not
take kindly to anything now that she was gone, and even in the rapidity
of the last expiring efforts of the season, he felt himself yawn and
think of quite another scene: of a little house to go home to, and say
what a bore it was, while Chatty took out her muslin work. He was so far
gone that he scrawled patterns for that muslin work over his blotting
books, arrangements of little holes, in squares, in rounds, in diagonal
formations, in the shape of primitive leaf and berry, at which he would
laugh all by himself and blush, and fling them into the fire--which did
not, however, by any means, withdraw the significance from these simple
attempts at ornamental art.

This would have been simple indeed had it been all. All the Cavendishes,
small and great, even the highest divinities of the name, would have
stooped from their high estate to express their pleasure that Dick had
found the "nice girl" who was to settle him and make him everything a
Cavendish should be. Ah, had that been but all! Dick was no coxcomb;
but he had read so much in Chatty's modest eyes as warranted him in
believing that he would not woo in vain. Though he could still laugh,
being of that nature of man, his heart, in fact, was overwhelmed with a
weight of trouble such as might have made the strongest cry out. But
crying out was not in his constitution. He went about his occupations,
his work, which, now that Chatty was gone, had few interruptions, chewing
the cud of the bitterest fancy and the most painful thought. He walked
about the streets, turning it over and over in his mind. He thought of
it even when he made the patterns of the holes and laughed at them,
tossing them into the fire. Underneath all his lightest as well as his
most serious occupations ran this dark and stern current. The arrival
of Mrs. Warrender's note made it still darker and more urgent, carrying
him away upon its tide. It was not the first letter he had received from
her. He had insisted upon hearing whether their journey home had been a
pleasant one, how they had liked their new house, and many other trivial
things, and he had asked for that invitation from Saturday to Monday,
which now was reversed and turned into an almost-week, from Monday to
Saturday. He did not know whether he meant or not to go: but anyhow the
invitation, the power of going if he pleased, was sweet to him. He kept
it b