“Yes, I might be better there, reclaimed from the waste—of London life. Strange that your talk should hit upon New England. I was thinking of that New World not an hour ago at the play—thinking what a happy innocent life a man might lead there, were he but young and free, with one he loved.”
“Innocent, yes; happy, no; unless he were a savage or a peasant,” Hyacinth exclaimed disdainfully. “We that have known the grace and beauty of life cannot go back to the habits of our ancestors, to eat without forks, and cover our floors with rushes instead of Persian carpets.”
“The beauty and grace of life—houses that are whited sepulchres, banquets where there is no love.”
The coach stopped before the tall Italian doorway, and Fareham handed out his wife and sister in silence; but there was one of the party to whom it was unnatural to be mute.
Papillon sprang off the coach step into her father’s arms.
“Sweetheart, why are you so sad?” she asked. “You look more unhappy than Philaster when he thought his lady loved him not.”
She would not be put off, but hung about him all the length of the corridor, to the door of his room, where he parted from her with a kiss on her forehead.
“How your lips burn!” she cried. “I hope you are not sickening for the plague. I dreamt last night that the contagion had come back; and that our new glass coach was going about with a bell collecting the dead.”
“Thou hadst eaten too much supper, sweet. Such dreams are warnings against excess of pies and jellies. Go, love; I have business.”
“You have always business now. You used to let me stay with you—even when you was busy,” Henriette remonstrated, dejectedly, as the sonorous oak door closed against her.