What gracious dignity they had! Here was his sister-what beauty
and elegance and grace of manner! But Easter! Wherever she was
placed the other figures needed readjustment. There was
something irritably incongruous-Ah! now he had it-his mind grew
hazy-he was asleep.
X
DURING the weeks that followed, some malignant spirit seemed
to be torturing him with a slow realization of all he had lost;
taunting him with the possibility of regaining it and the certainty of
losing it forever.
As he stepped from the dock at Jersey City the fresh sea wind had
thrilled him like a memory, and his pulses leaped instantly into
sympathy with the tense life that vibrated in the air. He seemed
never to have been away so long, and never had home seemed so
pleasant. His sister had grown more beautiful; his mother's quiet,
noble face was smoother and fairer than it had been for years; and
despite the absence of his father, who had been hastily summoned
to England, there was an air of cheerfulness in the house that was
in marked contrast to its gloom when Clayton was last at home.
He had been quickened at once into a new appreciation of the
luxury and refinement about him, and he soon began to wonder
how he had inured himself to the discomforts and crudities of his
mountain life. Old habits easily resumed sway over him.
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