He laid his hand upon Carter’s shoulder as he spoke, and Carter, who didn’t at all understand what he meant, thought that he understood, and was correspondingly happy.
They boarded the ferry then, and went from Hoboken straight back to civilization.
The “Kronprinz” meanwhile was slowly wending her way down the river, past the skyscrapers, and out towards the open sea.
Rosina, already established in her chair, with a mother-of-pearl lorgnette upon her lap and a pair of field-glasses swinging from the card-holder, felt more placidly happy than she had in years. If those left behind who supposed that she was going abroad to get a second husband could but have gazed into her heart, they would have comprehended the utter and complete falsity of their views.
Her year and a half of widowhood had been one long-continued period of quiet ecstasy.
Standing alone in her own room the morning after the funeral, she had made a vow to never marry again.
“Enough is as good as a feast,” she had said, surveying her crape-draped self with a deep sense of satisfaction; “it never approached anything like a feast, but it certainly has taught me to know when I have had enough.”
And then new orders had been issued to every department of her establishment, and a peace approaching Paradise reigned in her heart.
When Carter, in a moment of daring courage, found words in which to unfold the facts of his case, she listened in a spirit of intense wonder that he could really be stupid enough to suppose that she would consider such an idea for a minute.