Page 828 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

minutes she found herself near a rustic bench, which, a
moment after she had looked at it, struck her as an object
recognized. It was not simply that she had seen it before, nor
even that she had sat upon it; it was that on this spot some-
thing important had happened to her-that the place had an
air of association. Then she remembered that she had been
sitting there, six years before, when a servant brought her
from the house the letter in which Caspar Goodwood in-
formed her that he had followed her to Europe; and that
when she had read the letter she looked up to hear Lord
Warburton announcing that he should like to marry her.
It was indeed an historical, an interesting, bench; she stood
and looked at it as if it might have something to say to her.
She wouldn’t sit down on it now-she felt rather afraid of it.
She only stood before it, and while she stood the past came
back to her in one of those rushing waves of emotion by
which persons of sensibility are visited at odd hours. The ef-
fect of this agitation was a sudden sense of being very tired,
under the influence of which she overcame her scruples and
sank into the rustic seat. I have said that she was restless and
unable to occupy herself; and whether or no, if you had seen
her there, you would have admired the justice of the former
epithet, you would at least have allowed that at this moment
she was the image of a victim of idleness. Her attitude had
a singular absence of purpose; her hands, hanging at her
sides, lost themselves in the folds of her black dress; her eyes
gazed vaguely before her. There was nothing to recall her
to the house; the two ladies, in their seclusion, dined early
and had tea at an indefinite hour. How long she had sat in

828 The Portrait of a Lady