Chapter 6

AUNT ANGELICA

The first changes referred especially to Hyde's life, and were not
altogether approved by him. His pretence of reading law had to be
abandoned, for he had promised to remain at home with his mother, and it
would not therefore be possible for him to dawdle about Pearl Street and
Maiden Lane watching for Cornelia. But he had that happy and fortunate
temper that trusts to events; and also, he soon began to realize that if
circumstances alter cases, they also alter feelings.

For, looking upon Hyde Manor as the future home of himself and his wife--
and that wife, happily, Cornelia--he found it very easy to take an
almost eager interest in all that concerned its welfare and beauty. "How
good! How unselfish he is!" thought his mother. "Never before has he
been so ready to listen and so willing to please me." But, really, the
work soon became delightful to him. The passion for land and for its
improvement--the ruling passion of an Englishman--was not absent in
George; it was only latent, and the idea of home, of his own personal
home, developed it with amazing rapidity. He was soon able to make
excellent suggestions to his mother; for her ideas, beautiful enough in
the cultivation of flat surfaces, did not embody the grander
possibilities of the higher lands near the river. But George saw every
advantage, and with great ability directed his little gang of labourers
among the rocks and woody crags of the yet unplanted wilderness.

In spite of their anxiety about the General, in spite of George's
longing to see Cornelia, these early summer days, with their glory of
sunshine and shade and their miracles of growth, were very happy days;
though madame reached her happiness by putting the future quite out of
her thoughts, and George reached his by anticipating the future as the
fruition of the present. Never since his early boyhood had madame and
her son been so near and so dear to each other; for her brother-in-law's
probable death and her husband's dangerous journeying released her from
social engagements, and permitted her to spend her time in the
employments and the companionship she loved best of all.

George, while accepting for himself the same partial seclusion, had more
freedom. He rode into town three or four times every week; got the news
of the clubs and the streets; loitered about Maiden Lane and the
shopping district; and when disappointed and vexed at events went to his
Grandmother Van Heemskirk for sympathy. For, as yet, he hesitated about
naming Cornelia to his mother. He was sure she was aware of his passion,
and her reticence on the subject made him fear she was going to advocate
the fulfilment of his father's promise. And he had such a singular
delicacy