[CHAPTER] IV.
THE END OF SEPTEMBER.
“He comes, the herald of a noisy world;
News from all nations lumbering at his back.
. . . . . Messenger of grief
Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some:
To him indifferent whether grief or joy.
THE TASK.
“Art than dead?
Dead? . . . . .
Could from earth’s ways that figure alight
Be lost and I not know ‘twas so?
Of that fresh voice the gay delight
Fade from earth’s air, and I not know!”
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
IT was not, certainly, a pleasant change from Altes to London, for poor Marion. For a day or two she was perfectly alone, her father, as she had expected, absent; and she herself too anxious and dispirited to care to announce her return to the few friends, so-called, with whom she was on anything like intimate terms.
On the third day Mr. Vere made his appearance. Marion was sitting alone, late in the afternoon, in the same room in which we first saw her, when he returned. She heard him enter the house, she heard his step on the stair, and rose, half trembling, to greet him. Oh, how she wished she could feel glad to see him! What she had of late gone through had both softened and widened her heart. She was very ready to love this father of hers, if only he would let her, but alas, it was too late in the day for anything of this kind!
He came in. A tall, slightly bent, grizzled man. Looking older, considerably so, than his age, and giving one, somehow, the impression that he must always have appeared so.
He shook hands with his daughter in what he intended for a cordial manner, and then in a jerky sort of way kissed her forehead, as if he were half ashamed of what he was doing.