"A country-seat!" ejaculated John, wheeling square round, so as to face his wife; "catch me at it! Eat up by musquitos, kept awake by bull-frogs, serenaded by tree-toads, bored to death by riding-parties from the city, who devour your fruit, break off your flowers, and bark your trees; horses and carriages to keep, two or three extra servants, conservatory, hot-house, stables, barns, garden-tools, ice-house—shan't do it, Mrs. Howe;" and John turned his back, put his heels deliberately up on the window-seat, and resumed his chibouk.
Mrs. Howe smiled a little quiet smile, snapped her finger, as if at some invisible enemy, and tiptoeing up behind her husband's chair, whispered something in his conjugal ear.
The second time that magic whisper had conquered Mr. Howe!
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Slowly Rose regained her consciousness. Had she been dreaming about Vincent's death? The dim light of morning was struggling in through the vines that latticed the window. She raised herself from the floor. Ah, now she remembered. It was only the incoherent ravings of the poor crazed being who had been in the evening before; how foolish to let it make her so miserable! As if there were not more than one person of the name of Vincent in the world. She tried to shake off her miserable thoughts; she knelt by the side of little Charley's bed, and kissed his blue eyes awake, although it was scarcely daylight; for she felt so lonely, just as if her Vincent were really dead, and the wide earth held but one. She took Charley up and held him in her arms, and laid her cheek to his. Strange she could not shake off that leaden feeling. It must be that she were ill, she was so excitable; she would be better after breakfast. Sad work those trembling fingers made with Charley's toilet that morning. Still she kept tying, and buttoning, and pinning, and rolling his curls over her fingers—for the restless, unquiet heart finds relief in motion; ay, motion—when the brain reels and despair tugs at the heart-strings. Oh, Time be merciful! bear swiftly on the restless spirit to meet its fate; torture it no longer, suspended by a hair over the dread abyss!
It had commenced raining. Rose believed it was that which made her linger on that morning, forgetting through how many drenching rains she had patiently traversed those streets.
She walks back and forth from the window irresolutely. She thinks she will wait till the skies clear. Poor Rose! will thy sky ever be clear? Now she listlessly takes up a newspaper, with which Charley has been playing. She smooths out its crumpled folds, and reads mechanically through advertisements of runaway negroes, sales of slaves at the auction block, ship-news, casualties, marriages, deaths. Ah! what is that?