Roxy Hastings — page 201: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

192 ROXY HASTINGS. “She'll be all right,” he would say; “only let her see him.” \ : Yet, Charles was not happy. He was very busy, for he had the affairs of half a dozen reduced families on his hands, old friends of his father or his own, whom, un- known to them, he was indirectly aiding. Then he was planning, with an architect, a great house, which he was going to build near the Central Park, and with a landscape gardener, the extensive grounds which were to surround it. When he came out from the clouds under which he still walked, he scarcely knew why. He was busy, but he was not quite happy, and the shad- ows which would fall at times upon his face were always reflected in that of the watchful Roxana. He left nothing undone which could contribute to the enjoyment of his friends except heartily participating in it, and this excep- tion dashed every cup from Roxy’s lips. He was absent- minded and restrained at times, and at times there was an unnatural hilarity in his manner which excited the wonder of his mother and sister. . Alfred came rather sooner than was expected—tired of tfavel—feeble, and having quite abandoned the idea of a winter sojourn in Kurope. He had heard from Louis Hart- ley, who was expecting to be exchanged soon, and this news, together with his joy at reaching home, had elated him so muchas to excite the most sanguine hopes of his friends—but he soon relapsed into his former state of gloom, and his fondness for entire seclusion. Sometimes he would pass whole days in his room, occu- pied on his translations of Horace, and when he gave some enforced attention to the occupations and amusements of the family, it was so evidently “‘a weariness” to him, they could not cheat themselves into the illusion that his pre- tended enjoyment was real. | Roxy, who soon saw that she was looked to for assist- ance in ministering to this “mind diseased,” exerted her powers to please the invalid when they were together, which was not often. His deportment toward her was touchingly gentle and amiable, but he always seemed to be looking through and beyond her to the lost darling, for whose sake his heart had become a well of tenderness toward all her sex. How anxiously his mother watched him, while trying to seem unsolicitous; how many devices she used to bring him and her little fairy guest together in the same occupa- tion, or the same pastime; how gleefully she reported to Gomicbooks.co