“Then I will be answerable for the breach of etiquette, should it ever be found out,” was the reply, and Rosa disappeared into the tiring-room to equip herself for the walk.
It was a lovely night for December—moonlighted and bland as October, and neither manifested a disposition to accelerate the saunter into which they had fallen at their first step beyond the portico. Rosa dropped her rattling tone, and began to talk seriously and sensibly of the scene they had left, the flatness of fashionable society after the freshness of novelty had passed from it, and her preference for home life and tried friends.
“Yet I always rate these the more truly after a peep at a different sphere,” she said. “Our Old Virginia country-house is never so dear and fair at any other time as when I return to it after playing at fine lady abroad for a month or six weeks. I used to fret at the monotony of my daily existence; think my simple pleasures tame. I am thankful that I go back to them, as I grow older, as one does to pure, cold water, after drinking strong wine.”
“You are blessed in having this fountain to which you may resort in your heart-drought,” answered Frederic, sadly. “The gods do not often deny the gift of home and domestic affections to woman. It is an exception to a universal rule when a man who has reached thirty without building a nest for himself, has a pleasant shelter spared, or offered to him elsewhere.”
“Yet you would weary, in a week, of the indolent, aimless life led by most of our youthful heirs expectant and apparent,” returned Rosa. “I remember once telling you how I envied you for having work and a career. I was youthful then myself—and foolish as immature.”
“I recollect!” and there was no more talk for several squares.
Rosa was getting alarmed at the thought of her temerity in reverting to this incident in their former intercourse, and meditating the expediency of entering upon an apology, which might, after all, augment, rather than correct the mischief she had done, when Frederic accosted her as if there had been no hiatus in the dialogue.
“I recollect!” he repeated, just as before. “It was upon the back piazza at Ridgeley, after breakfast on that warm September morning, when the air was a silvery haze, and there was no dew upon the roses. I, too, have grown older—I trust, wiser and stronger since I talked so largely of my career—what I hoped to be and to do. When did you see her—Miss Aylett,” abruptly, and with a total change of manner.
“The Rubicon is forded,” thought Rosa, complacently, the while her compassion for him was sincere and strong. “He can never shut his heart inexorably against me after this.”
Aloud, she replied after an instant's hesitation designed to prepare him for what was to follow—“I was with Mabel for several days last May. We have not met since.”