“Did she talk about her work?” she exclaimed. “She never got away from her books, and she drenched us with her successes until our ardor was more than dampened. It was soaked. She gave us to understand that she had Browning beaten on obscurity, Ibsen on subtlety, and Maeterlinck on imagination. And when she left there was a heavy silence for a minute, and then Alec Carter said: ‘Now let’s talk nursery rhymes for a while. We might begin on “Little bas bleu, come blow your horn.”’”
She made her adieux on the strength of that, collecting her purse, her feather boa and her daughter from different parts of the room, with surprising promptitude.
It was her practice to save her best rocket for the last, and disappear in the glory of its swish.
Bobbins accompanied the Van Velts to their carriage, and, to misquote long-suffering Omar, once departed, he returned no more.
Carrington turned to Hastings the moment they were out of the door.
“You’ll excuse me if I read dad’s letter, won’t you? My time is getting so short,” he said, apologetically; and went over to one of the long windows to get the benefit of its light.
Elenore turned to Hastings with the question that had been hovering on her lips for the last half-hour.
“Tell me why you are so serious,” she said. “Has anything gone wrong? It doesn’t mean that you are not coming to Brittany to see the Waldens and—me—this summer, does it?”
“It means a great deal more than that,” said Hastings, soberly. “Yesterday I thought I was on my way to being a rising architect. To-day I am simply cast into outer darkness. The shears of fate have clipped this piece of my life short, and I can’t see what the next is going to be like.”
“Tell me,” said Elenore, quietly.