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Claribel had used all the arguments she could devise to reconcile Amaranthé to her altered state, but with little success. One remarkably fine day she prevailed upon her to go out into the air: they walked to a part of the grounds that had in their childhood been appropriated as their play place. Here, while resting on a bench, they were joined by Adrian.
"For pity's sake, my dear cousins," cried Claribel, "do not quarrel. Remember, destitute orphans as we are, we have nothing left in this world but each other, and if we are not united, what is to become of us?" Adrian was touched; looking tenderly on his sister, "Claribel is right," said he. "We are, indeed, bereaved of every thing else, and shall we forsake each other?
"And those," said Amaranthé, "are the trees you so often climbed to get birds' eggs for Claribel and me to string, when we pretended to be hermits, and called them our rosaries!" "Happy, happy days of blessed innocence!" groaned out her brother; "would to heaven ye could be recalled! Never again would I barter ye for grandeur and licentiousness!"
The Nurse went up to her ward, and put a screen around Claribel, and, with all her woman's art, tidied the immaculate white bed and loosened the uncompromising yellow braids, so that the soft hair fell across Claribel's bloodless forehead and softened the defiance in her blue eyes. She brought the pink hyacinth in its pot, too, and placed it on the bedside table.
Claribel heard the relation of her disgrace with unfeigned concern, but all the time she was speaking looked earnestly at her with marks of excessive surprise. After some hesitation, she, trembling as she spoke, said, "Pray, cousin, have you lately looked at your hyacinth?" The question operated like an electric shock upon Amaranthé. The truth flashed across her mind.
Now that 'Carrington' has failed and sister lost hope " She did not finish the sentence, but sat there on the attic floor in a disconsolate little heap, staring out the tiny window while the rain beat a dirge on the leaky roof. Suddenly she was startled by Claribel scrambling to her feet. "You hear me, Wilma Mason," she cried. "I'll never be mortified again in this way!
O, rejoice Beyond a common joy; and set it down With gold on lasting pillars: in one voyage Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis; And Ferdinand, her brother, found a wife Where he himself was lost; Prospero, his dukedom, In a poor isle; and all of us, ourselves, Where no man was his own.
"No, there was that letter to sister, you know, and it sounds just as I've imagined Tom would knock, from what his mother told of him so peremptory and lordly, somehow, as if he wouldn't take no for an answer." "What shall we do?" groaned Claribel, desperately. "Even if we were fit to go down, there's nothing but bread and tea for lunch. Oh, if sister were only home!"
When arrived there she tore off all her gaudy apparel without once looking in the glass, and threw herself into bed, where for some hours she lay tumbling and tossing, but at last fell into a doze, from which she did not awake until mid-day. As soon as she arose she summoned Claribel, that she might give vent to her fury at the detestable events of the evening.
Then the Nurse gave him a gentle shove, and he was looking at Claribel a white, Madonna-faced Claribel, lying now with closed eyes, her long lashes sweeping her cheek. The girl did not open her eyes at his entrance. He put his hat awkwardly on the foot of the bed, and, tiptoeing around, sat on the edge of the stiff chair. "Well, how are you, kid?" he asked, with affected ease.
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