of the proposed
adoption,--Julia was deeper than had been suspected,--and in
order that the darkness they evidently sought should be ensured past
all doubt, they had prevailed upon the foster-parent to leave, like
the Arabs. No house was so near that she might to any purpose have
made inquiry, if she had cared to do that. But, as has been said, she
was satisfied. What had happened seemed to her obvious and what,
had she been a little wiser, she would have been prepared for. As
she rose, she laughed, or did something more or less like it, and
said aloud for the crows to hear: "What a fool I was to suppose that
anything I cared so much about could go right!" She got into her
phaeton and drove back. She said to them at home, and the hard sadness
setting her features was in its effect vindictive, "You see, you are
to have your wish, after all." To make investigation did not even
later enter her mind. She would not grant to her persecuting fate
the joy of beholding her tortured with suspenses or uncertainties. She
was persuaded of the worst. Her heart told her it was finished with
that dream.

After that she tried to make the best of her position, to keep her
mind fixed upon the advantages of her defeat. But the persistent image
of Larry, the memory of his thousand ways of being dear and The Only,
with the thought of never seeing him again or knowing anything further
about him, made her struggle for an ordinary exterior at moments more
than difficult. She came to learn the measure of the cheated feminine
tenderness which, denied any natural channel, had fastened so hungrily
upon that child of strangers, when it was thrown back useless upon her
heart. She selected finally, to dwell upon, the best of all the
possibilities: that among the people who had claimed him back--of fine
race, if he resembled them--he would find all for the absence of which
he had been pitied: the tender love of parents, the opportunities of a
privileged life. She agreed that his case would be better than if he
had been left to her. But after she had by arguments persuaded
herself, when by her own logic she had reason for rejoicing, there
closed down upon her a melancholy such as she had at intervals in her
life suffered from before. The experience was like going into a
tunnel, of which nothing could avail to lighten the darkness until by
the grace of God one came out at the other side of the hill. There was
no fighting it off by reason, no discovering