She heard Hollister reenter the house that night at a very late hour,
and pass to his own apartments. It was only after dawn that she obtained
a little restless and broken sleep. By nine o'clock she rang for her
coffee, and then, after forcing herself to swallow it, began to dress,
with her maid's assistance. Marie was a perfect servant. As she
performed with capable exactitude one after another careful duty, the
ease and charm of being thus waited upon appealed to Claire with an
ironical emphasis. The very softness and tasteful make of her garments
took a new and dreary meaning. She had forgotten for weeks the dainty
details of her late life, its elegance of tone, smoothness of movement,
nicety of balance. These features had grown customary and inconspicuous,
as cambric will in time grow familiar to the skin that has brushed
against coarser textures. But now the light, so to speak, had altered;
it was cloudy and stormful; it brought out in vivid relief what before
had been clad with the pleasant haze of habit. The very carpet beneath
Claire's tread took a reminding softness; the numberless attractions and
comforts of her chamber thrust forward special claims to her heed; even
the elaborate or simple utensils of her dressing-table had each its
distinct note of souvenir. She must so soon lose so much of it all!
As if by some automatic and involuntary process, memory slipped images
and pictures before her mental vision; she had noted them in the still,
dark hours of the previous night, and they remained unbanished now by
the glow of the wintry morning. She saw herself a child, cowed and
satirized by her coarse and domineering mother; she witnessed the
episode of her gentle father's firm and protective revolt; she lived
again through the prosperous rise of the family fortunes; she watched
herself brave and quell the insolence of Ada Gerrard, and slowly but
surely gain rank and recognition among those adverse and disdainful
schoolfellows; she endured anew the chagrin of subsequent decadence--the
commonness and the disrelish of her public school career, the
disappointment and monotony of her Jersey City experience, and then,
lastly, the laborious and deathly tedium of Greenpoint.... Here the
strange panorama would cease; the magic-lantern of reminiscence had no
more lenses in its shadowy repository; the actual took the place of
dream, and startled her by an aspect more unreal than though wrought
merely of recollection.
Had these recent weeks all been true? Had she climbed so high in fact
and not in fancy? Was the throne from which fate now gave harsh threat
of pushing her a throne not built of air, but material, tangible, solid?
The strangeness of her own history affected her in a purely objective
way. She seemed to stand apart from it and regard it as though it were
some lapse of singular country for which she had gained the sight-seer's
best vantage-point. Its acclivities were so sheer, its valleys were so
abrupt, it took such headlong plunges and made such unexpected ascents.
The discreet and sedulous Marie divined little of what engrossed her
mistress's mind, and withdrew in her wonted humility of courtesy when
Claire, no longer needing her service, at last dismissed her.
But before doing so, Claire took pains to learn that Hollister had not
yet descended for his breakfast, which of late he had usually eaten
alone in the great dining-room. She soon passed into her adjacent
boudoir, where fresh treasures and mementos addressed her through a
silent prophecy of coming loss.
Here was a writing-table, well supplied with various kinds of
note-paper, all bearing her initials in differing intertwisted devices.
Not long ago she had questioned her husband on the subject of the
Hollister crest; she would have been glad enough to receive from him
some clew that might lead to its discovery; but he had expressed frank
and entire ignorance regarding any such heraldic symbol.
Claire took a sheet of note paper, and in a hand that was just unsteady
enough to show her how strong an inward excitement was making stealthy
attack upon her nervous power, began a brief note to Stuart Goldwin.
When finished, the note (which bore no ceremonious prefix whatever, and
was unmarked by any date) ran as follows:--
"The words which you chose to address to me last night have
permanently ended our acquaintance. As a gentleman to a
gentlewoman, you were impolite. As a man to a woman, you were
far worse. I desire that you will not answer these few lines,
and that when we meet again, if such a meeting should ever
occur, you will expect from me no more sign of recognition than
that which I would accord any one who had given me an
unpardonable insult.