Chapter 7 - Page 2

reminiscences and anticipations
wherever he went. He knew that he could not talk against the great
public current, and that in the excited state of social feeling it would
be a kind of treason even to hint disapproval of Arenta, or of any of
her friends or doings. But he suffered. He was questioned by some, he
was enlightened by others; his opinion was asked about dresses and
ceremonies, he was constantly congratulated on his daughter's prominence
as bridesmaid, and he was sent for professionally, that he might be
talked to socially. Yet if he ventured to hint dissatisfaction, or to
express himself by a scornful "Pooh! Pooh!" he was answered by looks of
such astonishment, of such quick-springing womanly suspicions, that he
could not doubt the kind of conversation which followed his exit:

"Do you think Doctor Moran VERY clever?"

"Most people think so."

"He is so unsympathetic. Doctor Moore knows everything Madame Jacobus is
going to have, and to do. I think doctors ought to be chatty. It is so
good for their patients to be cheered up a little."

Doctor Moran divined perfectly this taste for gossip and MEDICINAL
sympathy combined, and to administer it was, to him, more nauseous than
his own bitterest drugs. So in these days he was not a cheerful man to
live with, and Cornelia's beauty and radiant happiness affected him very
much as Hyde's pronounced satisfaction affected Arenta. One morning, as
he was returning home after a round of disagreeable visits, he saw
Cornelia and Hyde coming up Broadway together. They were sauntering side
by side in all the lazy happiness of perfect love; and as he looked at
them the sorrow of an immense disillusion filled him to the lips. He had
believed himself, as yet, to be the first and the dearest in his child's
love; but in that moment his eyes were opened, and he felt as if he had
been suddenly thrust out from it and the door closed upon him.

He did the wisest thing possible: he went home to his wife. She heard
him ride with clattering haste into the stone court, and soon after
enter the house from the back, banging every door after him. She knew
then that something had angered him--that he was in that temper which
makes a woman cry, but which a man can only relieve by noisy or emphatic
movement of some kind. A resolute look came into her face and she said
to herself, "John has always had his own way--and my way also; but
Cornelia's way--the child must surely have something to say about that."

"Where is Cornelia, Ava?" He asked the question with a quick glance
round the room, as if he expected to find her present.

"Cornelia is not at home to-day."

"Is she ever at home