The tables were turned. The country ladies, who had been debating with themselves whether to "take up" or "drop" this very questionable stranger, received their congée from the countess herself from the threshold of her own door. The planters' wives were stunned! Each was a native queen, in her own little domain, over her own black subjects, and to meet with a repulse from a foreign countess was an incomprehensible thing!
The reverence for titled foreigners, for which we republicans have been justly laughed at, is confined exclusively to those large cities corrupted by European intercourse. It does not exist in the interior of the country. For instance, in Maryland and Virginia the owner of a large plantation had a domain greater in territorial extent, and a power over his subjects more absolute, than that of any reigning grand-duke or sovereign prince in Germany or Italy. The planter was an absolute monarch, his wife was his queen-consort; they saw no equals and knew no contradiction in their own realm. Their neighbors were as powerful as themselves. When they met, they met as peers on equal terms, the only precedence being that given by courtesy. How, then, could the planter's wife appreciate the dignity of a countess, who, on state occasions, must walk behind a marchioness, who must walk behind a duchess, who must walk behind a queen? Thus you see how it was that the sovereign ladies of Maryland thought they were doing a very condescending thing in calling upon the young stranger whose husband had deserted her, and whose mother and sisters-in-law had left her alone; and that her ladyship had committed a great act of ill-breeding and impertinence in declining their visits.
At the close of the Washington season Mrs. Brudenell and her daughters returned to the Hall. She told her friends that her son was traveling in Europe; but she told her daughter-in-law that she only hoped he was doing so; that she really had not heard a word from him, and did not know anything whatever of his whereabouts.
Mrs. Brudenell and her daughters received and paid visits; gave and attended parties, and made the house and the neighborhood very gay in the pleasant summer time.
Berenice did not enter into any of these amusements. She never accepted an invitation to go out. And even when company was entertained at the house she kept her own suite of rooms and had her meals brought to her there. Mrs. Brudenell was excessively displeased at a course of conduct in her daughter-in-law that would naturally give rise to a great deal of conjecture. She expostulated with Lady Hurstmonceux; but to no good purpose: for Berenice shrunk from company, replying to all arguments that could be urged upon her:
"I cannot—I cannot see visitors, mamma! It is quite—quite impossible."
And then Mrs. Brudenell made a resolution, which she also kept—never to come to Brudenell Hall for another summer until Herman should return to his home and Berenice to her senses. And having so decided, she abridged her stay and went away with her daughters to spend the remainder of the summer at some pleasant watering-place in the North.
And Berenice was once more left to solitude.
Now, Lady Hurstmonceux was not naturally cold, or proud, or unsocial; but as surely as brains can turn, and hearts break, and women die of grief, she was crazy, heart-broken, and dying.
She turned sick at the sight of every human face, because the one dear face she loved and longed for was not near. The pastor of the parish, with the benevolent perseverence of a true Christian, continued to call at the Hall long after every other human creature had ceased to visit the place. But Lady Hurstmonceux steadily refused to receive him.