October 15.—We are having Indian Summer weather now—almost oppressively warm. I have been wandering about all day, unable to settle down to anything. This morning I felt so lonesome that when I took the breakfast dishes down, I tried to strike up a conversation with Mrs. Harlan.
Hitherto I have found her as solemn and uncommunicative as the Sphinx, but as she took the tray from my hands, her wrinkles broke into the semblance of a smile. Positively at that moment it seemed to me that she resembled Arthur. Was it her smile, or the expression of her eyes? Has she, also, something to tell me?
“Don’t you get lonesome here?” I asked her sympathetically.
She shook her head.
“No, sir, I’m used to it now. I couldn’t stand it anywheres else.”
“And do you expect to go on living here the rest of your life?”
“That may not be very long, sir,” she said, and smiled again.
Her words were simple enough, but the way she looked at me when she uttered them seemed to give them a double meaning. She hobbled away, and I went upstairs and wrote Mrs. O’Brien to expect me early on the morning of the 19th.
October 18, 10 a. m.—Am catching the twelve o’clock train tonight. Thank God, I had the resolution to get away! I believe another week of this life would drive me mad. And perhaps Arthur is right—perhaps I shall never come back.