By the time they found them they were both as calm and self-possessed as usual. When, after a little more standing around, the gongs were rung and the time for farewell actually arrived, Lady Fletcher kissed her nephew and niece with neither more nor less than her usual cordiality, and Mrs. James was exactly as affectionate in her farewells to Harry as might have been expected. The two ladies also embraced each other with no sign of ill-feeling. Lady Fletcher's good-humor was unabated in quantity, if just a little strained in quality.
"Now comes the most amusing part of sailing," she said, "which is, watching other people cry. Don't tell me people don't love to cry better than anything else in the world; if not, why do they come down here? You might think that every one of them was being torn away from his home and country for life!"
"The time when I always want to cry most," contributed Uncle James, "is on landing. Everything is so disagreeable then, after the ease and comfort of the voyage."
That was the general tone of the parting. Even Aunt Cecilia smiled appreciatively and gave no sign of underlying emotion. But as she watched the great steamer glide slowly out of her slip her thoughts ran in such channels as these:
"Miriam is a brilliant woman; she has made a great lady of herself, and is going to be a still greater one. She has money, position, wit, beauty and youth. The greatest people come gladly to her house; small people scheme and plot to get invitations there. Yet what is it all worth, when the greatest blessing of all, the blessing of children, is denied her? And the terrible part of it is, she is so utterly unconscious of what she has missed; her whole heart is eaten up with those worldly and unsatisfactory things. Poor Miriam, I pity her as it is, but how I could pity her if it were all a little different!"
And the thoughts of Lady Fletcher, as she stood on the deck and watched the shores slip away from her, were somewhat as follows:
"I always thought Cecilia was one of the best of women, until this hour. I don't mind her being a great heiress, I don't mind her never being able to forget that she was a Van Lorn, I don't mind her subconscious attitude of having married beneath her when she married James—whose ancestors were governing colonies when hers were keeping a grocery store on lower Manhattan Island—! But when it comes to her boasting about having children, and flaunting them in my face because I haven't got any, I think I am about justified in saying that she shows a mean and ignoble nature. I have seen all I want to of Cecilia, for some time to come!"
CHAPTER VI
ARCADIA AND YANKEEDOM