Through One Administration

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

"Uncle Philip," she said, "you are bad again. The black marks have come back, and you are quite ugly; and you promised you would try not to let them come any more."

"I beg your pardon, Janey," he answered, and then turned to Bertha. "She does not like my black face," he said, "and no wonder. I am rather an unfortunate fellow to have my faults branded upon me so plainly that even a child can see them."

There was a touch of bitterness in the words, and in his manner of uttering them. Bertha answered him in a soft, level voice.

"You are severe upon yourself," she said. "It is much safer to be severe upon other people."

It was rather cruel, but she did not object to being cruel. There come to most women moments when to be cruel is their only refuge against themselves and others; and such a moment had come to her.

In looking back upon the evening, when it was over, the feeling that it had been unreal was stronger in Tredennis's mind than any other. It was all unreal from beginning to end,—the half-hour before dinner, when Arbuthnot and Richard and the professor came in, and Bertha stood near her father's chair and talked to him, and Tredennis, holding Janey on his knee and trying to answer her remarks lucidly, was aware only of the presence of the dark, slender figure near him, and the strange quiet of the low voice; the dinner itself, during which Richard was in the most attractive mood, and the professor was rather silent, and Arbuthnot's vivacity was a little fitful at first and afterward seemed to recover itself and rise to the occasion; while Bertha, with Jack on one hand and Janey on the other, cared for their wants and answered Richard's sallies, and aided him in them, and yet was not herself at all, but a new being.

"And you think," said the professor, later in the evening, when they had returned to the parlors,—"you think that you will like the quiet of the mountains?"

"I think it will be good for me," she answered, "and the children will like it."

"She will not like it at all," said Richard. "She will abhor it in ten days, and she will rush off to Fortress Monroe, and dance every night to make up for her temporary mental aberration."

"No, she will not," said Arbuthnot. "She has made preparations to enjoy her seclusion in its dramatic aspects. She is going to retire from the world in the character of a graceful anchorite, and she has already begun to dress the part. She is going to be simple and serious, and a trifle severe; and it even now expresses itself in the lines and color of her gown."