In the sharp pangs of his despair,
As angry hunters chase a wolf
From open field and hidden lair.
The servant who sat waiting in the vestibule was startled by the hard, tearless misery of Ada's face, as she entered her own dwelling that night. He looked at her earnestly, and seemed about to speak, but she swept by him with averted eyes and ascended the stairs.
It was the same man who had stood beside her chair at dinner that day. The look of anxiety was on his features yet, and he pressed his lips hard together as she passed him, evidently curbing some sharp sensation that the haughty bearing of his mistress aroused. He stood looking after her as she glided with a swift, noiseless tread over the richly carpeted stairs, her pale hand now and then gleaming out in startling relief from the ebony balustrade, and her stony face mocking the artificial scarlet of her mouth. She turned at the upper landing, and he saw her glide away in the soft twilight overhead. He stood a moment with his eyes riveted on the spot where she had disappeared, then he followed up the stairs with a step as firm and rapid as hers had been. Even his heavy foot left no sound on the mass of woven flowers that covered the steps, and the shadow cast by his ungainly figure moved no more silently than himself.
He opened several doors, but they closed after him without noise, and Ada was unconscious of his presence for several moments after he stood within her boudoir. A fire burned in the silver grate, casting a sunset glow over the room, but leaving many of its objects in shadow; for save a moonlight gleam that came from a lamp in the dressing-room, no other light was near.
Ada had flung her mantle on the couch, and with her arms folded on the black marble of the mantel-piece, bent her forehead upon them, and stood thus statue-like gazing into the fire. A clear amethystine flame quivered over the coal, striking the opals and brilliants that ornamented her dress, till they burned like coals of living fire upon the snow of her arms and bosom. Thus with the same prismatic light spreading from the jewels to her rigid face, she seemed more like a fallen angel mourning over her ruin than a living woman.
At length the servant made a slight noise. Ada lifted up her head, and a frown darkened her face.
"I did not ring—I do not require anything of you to-night," she said.
"I know it. I know well enough that you require nothing of me—that my very devotion is hateful to you. Why is it? I came up here, to-night, on purpose to ask the question—why is it?" answered the man, with a grave dignity, which was very remote from the manner which a servant, however favored, is expected to maintain toward his mistress. "What have I done to deserve this treatment?"