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The boys were up to see that everything was in order about the boat, and to transport the necessary number of cushions and rugs for the comfort of their passengers. Cricket dragged reluctant Hilda, who dearly loved her morning snooze, out of bed almost as early, though Eunice and Edna lazily turned over for another scrap of a nap.
"Yes, is it not heart-breaking? Poor Neville! and he is so devoted to her. They were to have been married next spring, but now Edna declares that nothing would induce her to marry him. She will have it that he is jealous and monopolizing, and that he distrusts her. Over and over again she told us both that she would be the slave of no man's caprice.
But Victor's astonishment was so genuine, and Mrs. Pontellier's indifference so apparent, that the disturbing notion did not lodge long in her brain. She contemplated with the greatest interest this woman who gave the most sumptuous dinners in America, and who had all the men in New Orleans at her feet. "What time will you have dinner?" asked Edna. "I'm very hungry; but don't get anything extra."
"MY DEAREST EDNA, It seems almost a year since I left you in dear old Norton, so much has happened since then. This is the very first chance I have had since I left to send you a letter, so I will make it a real long one, and try to tell you everything. "I was not sea-sick a bit, but Mark was. "In the Penobscot River we rescued a man from a floating cake of ice, and brought him with us.
That little Louie says she prays for you every night before she goes to sleep! What a comfort such letters must be to you! Edna, how happy you look! But there are tears shining in your eyes, they always come when you are glad. What books will you tell her to study?" "I will think about the subject, and let you read my answer.
Conway interrupted, "this doesn't sound a bit like my little girl talking about one person being richer than another and about one little girl's being furious about another's making friends with whom she chooses." Edna was silent for a moment. "Mother," she said presently, "it is all Clara Adams's doings. If she wouldn't speak to us nor let the other girls play with us, why, what could we do?"
Upon arriving at the flat where Edna lived under the mild protection of her easy-going aunt, he found Miss Kenby included in the arrangement. To this he did not object; Miss Kenby was kind as well as beautiful; and Larcher was not unwilling to show the tyrannical Edna that he could play the cavalier to one pretty girl as well as to another.
Then, when there comes a lull, he remarks casual: "If that is all, Sir, I wish to say to you that Edna and I are engaged, and that I intend to marry her early next week." Wow! That's the cue for another explosion. It starts in just as fierce as the first; but it don't last so long, and towards the end Pa Pulsifer is talkin' husky and puffing hard. "Go!" he winds up.
The world seemed glorified in sunshine; every one they met seemed happy, and yet Edna was wretched, and Hatty ill perhaps dying; and a great black cloud seemed to overshadow everything, a sense of terror and confusion, of utter chaos. "In the midst of life we are in death." Why did those words come to Bessie? Just before the train moved Richard broke the silence.
"I'm inclined to think you would get considerable diversion from them, and the study work at home would be in your line." Edna was silent a moment. She bent her head over her work a child's blouse that he might not notice that she was biting her lip, and she managed to impart a dispassionate and almost jaunty tone to the indictment which uttered.
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