“Will you not welcome a wanderer back to his home?”
She gave him the tips of her fingers, but the “Imp of the Perverse” dictated her answer,—
“As you saw fit to compare yourself, a few moments since, to certain celebrated absentees, I am constrained to tell you that I happen to be neither Penelope nor Gretchen, nor yet the illustrious dog referred to.”
He smiled good-humoredly, and replied,—
“I am not very sure that there is not a spice of Dame Van 10 Winkle somewhere in your nature. True, we are strangers, but I believe you are my sister’s adopted child, and I hope you are glad to see her brother at home once more. Jane is a dear kind link, who should make us at least good friends; for, if you are attached to her you will in time learn to like me.”
“I doubt it,—seeing that you resemble Miss Jane about as nearly as I do the Grand Lama of Larissa, or the idol Bhadrinath. But, sir, although it is not my office to welcome you, I presume you have not forgotten the front door, and once more I ask, Will you walk in and make yourself at home in your own house?”
As she led the way to the steps, the arched gate at the end of the avenue swung open, a carriage entered, and Salome retreated to her own room, leaving unwitnessed the happy meeting between an aged, infirm sister, and long-absent brother.
Locking the door to secure herself from intrusion, she drew a low rocking-chair to the hearth, where smouldered the embers of a dying fire, and dropping her face in her palms, stared abstractedly at the ashes. As she swayed slowly to and fro, her lips parted and closed, her brows bent from their customary curves of beauty, and half inaudibly she muttered,—
“The sceptre is departing from Judah. My rule is well nigh ended; the interregnum has been brief, and the old dynasty reigns once more. Just what I dreaded from the hour I heard he was coming home. I shall be reduced to a mere cipher, and made to realize my utter dependence,—and the iron will soon enter my soul. We paupers are adepts in the art of reading the countenance, and I have looked at this Ulpian Grey long enough to know that I might as well bombard Gibraltar with boiled peas as hope to conquer one of his whims or alter one of his purposes. There will be bitterness and strife between us. I shall wish him in his grave a thousand times before it closes over him,—and he, unless he is too good, will hate me cordially. I cannot and will not give up all my hopes and expectations, without a long, fierce struggle.”