That day Rem lingered with his sister, seeing no one else; and in the evening shadows he slipped quietly away.  He was very wretched, for he really loved Mary Damer, and his disappointment was bitterly keen and humiliating.  Besides which, he felt that his business efforts for two years were forfeited, and that he had the world to begin over again.  Without a friend to wish him a Godspeed the wretched man went on board the Southern packet, and in her dim lonely cabin sat silent and despondent, while she fought her way through swaying curtains of rain to the open sea.  Its great complaining came up through the darkness to him, and seemed to be the very voice of the miserable circumstances, that had separated and estranged his life from all he loved and desired.

This sudden destruction of all her hopes for her brother distressed Arenta.  Her own marriage had been a most unfortunate one, but its misfortunes had the importance of national tragedy.  She had even plucked honour to herself from the bloody tumbril and guillotine.  But Rem’s matrimonial failure had not one redeeming quality; it was altogether a shameful and well-deserved retribution.  And she had boasted to her friends not a little of the great marriage her brother was soon to make, and even spoken of Miss Damer, as if a sisterly affection already existed between them.  She could anticipate very well the smiles and shrugs, the exclamations and condolences she might have to encounter, and she was not pleased with her brother for putting her in a position likely to make her disagreeable to people.

But the heart of her anger was Cornelia—­” but for that girl,” Rem would have married Mary Damer, and his home in Boston might have been full of opportunities for her, as well as a desirable change when she wearied of New York.  Altogether it was a hard thing for her, as well as a dreadful sorrow for Rem; and she could not think of Cornelia without anger, “Just for her,” she kept saying as she dressed herself with an elaborate simplicity, “Just for her!  Very much she intruded herself into my affairs; my marriage was her opportunity with Lord Hyde, and now all she can do is to break up poor Rem’s marriage.”

When Cornelia entered the Van Ariens parlour Arenta was already there.  She was dressed in a gown of the blackest and softest bombazine and crape.  It had a distinguishing want of all ornament, but it was for that reason singularly effective against her delicate complexion and pale golden hair.  She looked offended, and hardly spoke to her old friend, but Cornelia was prepared for some exhibition of anger.  She had not been to see Arenta for a whole week, and she did not doubt she had been well aware of something unusual in progress.  But that Rem had accused himself did not occur to her; therefore she was hardly prepared for the passionate accusations with which Arenta assailed her.

“I think,” she said, “you have behaved disgracefully to poor Rem!  You would not have him yourself, and yet you prevent another girl—­whom he loves far better than ever he loved you—­from marrying him.  He has gone away ‘out of the world,’ he says, and indeed I should not wonder if he kills himself.  It is most certain you have done all you can to drive him to it,”