"She is with you now, then?"
"Oh, yes. She is the least changed of all. I didn't mean to tell, but keep her as a surprise. Of course, you will be a surprise to everybody.--There, run along, children; we'll follow.--Yes, won't it be delightful, Roger? We can all play at youth again."
"Like skeletons in some Dance of Death!" he exclaimed. "We shall be hideous in each other's sight."
"McLean, I am a bride," said his wife, not heeding the late misanthropy; "Helen is a girl; the ghost of the prior Mrs. Purcell shall be rediviva; and Katy there"------
"Wait a bit, Kate," said her cousin.
"Before you have shuffled off mortality for the whole party, sit down under this hedge,--here is an opportune bench,--and give me accounts from the day of my departure."
"Dear me, Roger, as if that were possible! The ocean in a tea-cup? Let me see,--you had a flirtation with Helen that summer, didn't you? Well, she spent the next winter at the Fort with the Purcells. It was odd to miss both her and Mrs. Laudersdale from society at once. Mrs. Laudersdale was ill; I don't know exactly what the trouble was. You know she had been in such an unusual state of exhilaration all that summer; and as soon as she left New Hampshire and began the old city-life, she became oppressed with a speechless melancholy, I believe, so that the doctors foreboded insanity. She expressed great disinclination to follow their advice, and her husband finally banished them all. It was a great care to him; he altered much. McLean surmised that she didn't like to see him, while she was in this state; for, though he used to surround her with every luxury, and was always hunting out new appliances, and raising the heavens for a trifle, he kept himself carefully out of her sight during the greater part of the winter. I don't know whether she became insufferably lonely, or whether the melancholy wore off, or she conquered it, and decided that it was not right to go crazy for nothing, or what happened. But one cold March evening he set out for his home, dreary, as usual, he thought; and he found the fire blazing and reddening the ceiling and curtains, the room all aglow with rich shadows, and his wife awaiting him, in full toilet, just as superb as you will see her tonight, just as sweet and cold and impassible and impenetrable. At least," continued Mrs. McLean, taking breath, "I have manufactured this little romance out of odds and ends that McLean has now and then reported from his conversation. I dare say there isn't a bit of it true, for Mr. Laudersdale isn't a man to publish his affairs; but I believe it. One thing is certain: Mrs. Laudersdale withdrew from society one autumn and returned one spring, and has queened it ever since."
"Is Mr. Laudersdale with you?"
"No. But he will come with their daughter shortly."
"And with what do you all occupy yourselves, pray?"