Josiah had been too much fatigued on his machinery hunt with Mr.
Clutterbuck R. Tubbs. They had lunched too richly, he said, and stood
about too long, and so all the Sunday he was peevish and fretful, and
required Theodora's constant attention. She must sit by his bedside all
the morning, and drive round and round all the afternoon.
He told her she was not looking well. These excursions did not suit
either of them, and he would be glad to get to England.
He asked a few questions about Versailles, and Theodora vouchsafed no
unnecessary information. Nor did she tell him of her father's
good-fortune. The widow had expressly asked her not to. She wished it to
appear in the New York Herald first of all, she said. And they could
have a regular rejoicing at the banquet on Monday night.
"Men are all bad," she had told Theodora during their ante-dinner chat.
"Selfish brutes most of them; but nature has arranged that we happen to
want them, and it is not for me to go against nature. Your father is a
gentleman and he keeps me from yawning, and I have enough money to be
able to indulge that and whatever other caprices I may have acquired; so
I think we shall be happy. But a man in the abstract--don't amount to
much!" And Theodora had laughed, but now she wondered if ever she would
think it was true. Would Hector ever appear in the light of a caprice
she could afford, to keep her from yawning? Could she ever truly say,
"He don't amount to much!" Alas! he seemed now to amount to everything
in the world.
The unspeakable flatness of the day! The weariness! The sense of all
being finished! She did not even allow herself to speculate as to what
Hector was doing with himself. She must never let her thoughts turn that
way at all if she could help it. She must devote herself to Josiah and
to getting through the time. But something had gone out of her life
which could never come back, and also something had come in. She was
awake--she, too, had lived for one moment like in Jean d'Agrève--and
it seemed as if the whole world were changed.
Captain Fitzgerald did not appear all day, so the Sunday was composed
of unadulterated Josiah. But it was only when Theodora was alone at last
late at night, and had opened wide her windows and again looked out on
the moon, that a little cry of anguish escaped her, and she remembered
she would see Hector to-morrow at the dinner-party. See him casually, as
the rest of the guests, and this is how it would be forever--for ever
and ever.