iterature,
the flowers and the fruit with which they had provided her had helped to
pass the hours, tedious at best on ship-board. Two other friends, not so
near, but very pleasant--they were New York people--were also making the
voyage, but as they were all very sea-sick, intercourse with them
consisted mainly in looking in upon them as they lay, mute and enduring,
within their berths, and cheering them with the latest reports of
progress. Althea looked in upon them frequently, and she read all her
books, and much of her time, besides, had been spent in long, formless
meditations--her eyes fixed on the rippled, grey expanse of the Atlantic
while she lay encased in furs on her deck chair. These meditations were
not precisely melancholy, it was rather a brooding sense of vague
perplexity that filled the dream-like hours. She had left her native
land, and she was speeding towards her lover and towards her new life;
there might have been exhilaration as well as melancholy in these facts.
But though she was not melancholy, she was not exhilarated. It was a
confused regret that came over her in remembering Boston, and it was a
confused expectancy that filled her when she looked forward to Gerald.
Gerald had written to her punctually once a week while she had been in
America, short, but very vivid, very interesting and affectionate
letters. They told her about what he was doing, what he was reading, the
people he saw and his projects for their new life together. He took it
for granted that this was what she wanted, and of course it was what she
wanted, only--and it was here that the confused regrets arose in
remembering Boston--the letters received there, where she was so much of
a centre and so little of a satellite, had seemed, in some way, lacking
in certain elements that Boston supplied, but that Merriston House, she
more and more distinctly saw, would never offer. She was, for her own
little circle, quite important in Boston. At Merriston House she would
be important only as Gerald Digby's wife and as the mistress of his
home, and that indeed--this was another slightly confusing fact--would
not be great importance. Even in Boston, she had felt, her importance
was still entirely personal; she had gained none from her coming
marriage. Her friends were perfectly accustomed to the thought of
coronets and ancient estates in connection with foreign alliances, and
Althea was a little vexed in feeling that they really did not appr