"Oh yes," she said; "thank him; I am sorry I was so silly."
"He wants me to dine there to-night, mother, to meet Mr. Rowse and
Mr. Wakefield," said Allen, with a certain importance suited to a lad
of fifteen, who had just become "somebody."
"Very well," she said, in weary acquiescence, as she lay down again,
just enough refreshed by the coffee to become sleepy.
"And mother," said Allen, lingering in the dark, "don't trouble about
Elfie. I shall marry her as soon as I am of age, and that will make
all straight."
Her stunned sleepiness was scarcely alive to this magnanimous
announcement, and she dreamily said—-
"Time enough to think of such things."
"I know," said Allen; "but I thought you ought to know this."
He looked wistfully for another word on this great avowal, but she
was really too much stupefied to enter into the purport of the boy's
words, and soon after he left her she fell sound asleep. She had a
curious dream, which she remembered long after. She seemed to have
identified herself with King Midas, and to be touching all her
children, who turned into hard, cold, solid golden statues fixed on
pedestals in the Belforest gardens, where she wandered about, vainly
calling them. Then her husband's voice, sad and reproachful, seemed
to say, "Magnum Bonum! Magnum Bonum!" and she fancied it the elixir
which alone could restore them, and would have climbed a mountain in
search of it, as in the Arabian tale; but her feet were cold, heavy,
and immovable, and she found that they too had become gold, and that
the chill was creeping upwards.
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