She went out again into the little hall.  The front door stood open; sunshine flooded the garden; but Alma was not tempted to go forth.  All the walks and drives of the neighbourhood had become drearily familiar; the meanest of London streets shone by contrast as a paradise in her imagination.  With a deep sigh of ennui, she turned and slowly ascended the stairs.

Above were six rooms; three of them the principal chambers (her own, Harvey’s, and the guest-room), then the day-nursery, the night nursery, and the servant’s bedroom.  On her first coming, she had thought the house needlessly spacious; now it often seemed to her oppressively small, there being but one spare room for visitors.  She entered her own room.  It could not be called disorderly, yet it lacked that scrupulous perfection of arrangement, that dainty finish, which makes an atmosphere for the privacy of a certain type of woman.  Ruth had done her part, preserving purity unimpeachable; the deficiency was due to Alma alone.  To be sure, she had neither dressing-room nor lady’s-maid; and something in Alma’s constitution made it difficult for her to dispense with such aids to the complete life.

She stood before the mirror, and looked at herself, blankly, gloomily.  Her eyes fell a little, and took a new expression, that of anxious scrutiny.  Gazing still, she raised her arms, much as though she were standing to be measured by a dressmaker; then she turned, so as to obtain a view of her figure sideways.  Her arms fell again, apathetically, and she moved away.

Somehow, the long morning passed.  In the afternoon she drove with Harvey and Mrs. Frothingham, conversing much as usual, giving no verbal hint of her overwhelming ennui.  No reference was made to Mrs. Abbott.  Harvey had himself written her a letter, supporting Alma’s invitation with all possible cordiality; but he gravely feared that she would not come.

At tea, according to custom, little Hugh was brought into the room, to be fondled by his mother, who liked to see him when he was prettily dressed, and to sit upon his father’s knee.  Hugh, aged sixteen months, began to have a vocabulary of his own, and to claim a share in conversation; he had a large head, well formed, and slight but shapely limbs; the sweet air of sea and mountain gave a healthful, though very delicate, colouring to his cheeks; his eyes were Alma’s, dark and gleaming, but with promise of a keener intelligence.  Harvey liked to gaze long at the little face, puzzled by its frequent gravity, delighted by its flashes of mirth.  Syllables of baby-talk set him musing and philosophising.  How fresh and young, yet how wondrously old!  Babble such as this fell from a child’s lips thousands of years ago, in the morning of the world; it sounded on through the ages, infinitely reproduced; eternally a new beginning; the same music of earliest human speech, the same ripple of innocent laughter, renewed from generation to generation.  But he, listening, had not the merry, fearless pride of fathers in an earlier day.  Upon him lay the burden of all time; he must needs ponder anxiously on his child’s heritage, use his weary knowledge to cast the horoscope of this dawning life.