He
went abroad without a word to Adela, but in his beautiful little hand
he took a chaffing leave of Beatrice. The child showed her sister
the letter, of which she was very proud and which contained no
message for any one else. This was the worst bitterness of the whole
crisis for that somebody--its placing in so strange a light the
creature in the world whom, after her mother, she had loved best.
Colonel Chart had said he would "run down" while his children were at
Brinton, but they heard no more about it. He only wrote two or three
times to Miss Flynn on matters in regard to which Adela was surprised
he shouldn't have communicated with herself. Muriel accomplished an
upright little letter to Mrs. Churchley--her eldest sister neither
fostered nor discouraged the performance--to which Mrs. Churchley
replied, after a fortnight, in a meagre and, as Adela thought,
illiterate fashion, making no allusion to the approach of any closer
tie. Evidently the situation had changed; the question of the
marriage was dropped, at any rate for the time. This idea gave our
young woman a singular and almost intoxicating sense of power; she
felt as if she were riding a great wave of confidence. She had
decided and acted--the greatest could do no more than that. The
grand thing was to see one's results, and what else was she doing?
These results were in big rich conspicuous lives; the stage was large
on which she moved her figures.
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