Through One Administration

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

There were no particular traces of anguish upon his countenance when he presented himself, the evening in question having arrived. He appeared, in fact, to be in reasonably good spirits. Nothing could have been more perfect than the evening was from first to last: the picturesque and charming home was at its best; Mrs. Sylvestre the most lovely central figure in its picturesqueness; Mrs. Merriam even more gracious and amusing than usual. The gay world was represented by its gayest and brightest; the majority of those who had appeared on the night of the ball appeared again. Rather late in the evening Blundel came in, fresh from an exciting debate in the Senate, and somewhat flushed and elated by it. He made his way almost immediately to Bertha. Those who stood about her made way for him as he came. She was not sitting alone to-night; there seemed no likelihood of her being called upon to sit alone again. She had not only regained her old place, but something more. The professor had accompanied her, and at no time was far away from her. He hovered gently about in her neighborhood, and rarely lost sight of her. He had never left her for any great length of time since the night Tredennis had gone away. He had asked her no questions, but they had grown very near to each other, and any mystery he might feel that he confronted only made him more tender of her.

When Senator Blundel found himself standing before her he gave her a sharp glance of scrutiny.

"Well," he said, "you are rested and better, and all the rest of it. Your pink gown is very nice, and it gives you a color and brightens you up."

"I chose the shade carefully," she answered, smiling. "If it had been deeper it might have taken some color away from me. I am glad you like it."

"But you are well?" he said, a little persistently. He was not so sure of her, after all. He was shrewd enough to wish she had not found it necessary to choose her shade with such discretion.

She smiled up at him again.

"Yes, I am well," she said. "And I am very glad to see you again."

But for several seconds he did not answer her; standing, he looked at her in silence as she remembered his doing in the days when she had felt as if he was asking himself and her a question. But she knew it was not the same question he was asking himself now, but another one, and after he had asked it he did not seem to discover the answer to it, and looked baffled and uncertain, and even disturbed and anxious. And yet her pretty smile did not change in the least at any moment while he regarded her. It only deserted her entirely once during the evening. This was when she said her last words to Arbuthnot. He had spent the previous evening with her in her own parlor. Now, before she went away,—which she did rather early,—they had a few minutes together in the deserted music-room, where he took her while supper was in progress.

Neither of them had any smiles when they went in together and took their seats in a far corner.

Bertha caught no reflected color from her carefully chosen pink. Suddenly she looked cold and worn.