Her eye rested casually for a moment on Mr.
Raleigh, as she crossed the threshold, and then returned with a species
of calm curiosity.
"Mrs. Laudersdale has forgotten me?" he asked, with a bow. His voice,
not susceptible of change in its tone of Southern sweetness,
identified him.
"Not at all," she replied, moving toward him, and offering him her hand
quietly. "I am happy at meeting Mr. Raleigh again." And she took
her seat.
There was something in her grasp that relieved him. It was neither
studiedly cold, nor absurdly brief, nor traitorously tremulous. It was
simply and forgetfully indifferent. Mr. Raleigh surveyed her with
interest during the light table-talk. He had been possessed with a
restless wish to see her once more, to ascertain if she had yet any
fraction of her old power over him; he had all the more determinedly
banished himself from the city,--to find her in the country. Now he
sought for some trace of what had formerly aroused his heart. He rose
from table convinced that the woman whom he once loved with the whole
fervor of youth and strength and buoyant life was no more, that she did
not exist, and that Mr. Raleigh might experience a new passion, but his
old one was as dead as the ashes that cover the Five Cities of the
Plain.
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