Tennyson will never
cause the downfall of any woman, but if you ever see lightning on the
horizon don't read 'The Statue and the Bust' with the battery therof."
XIV
When people returned to town they were astonished at the change in
Madeleine Talbot, especially after a summer in the city that would
have "torn their own nerves out by the roots." More than one had
wondered anxiously if she were going into the decline so common in
those days. They had known the cause of the broken spring, but none
save the incurably sanguine opined that Howard Talbot had mended it.
But mended it was and her eyes had never sparkled so gaily, nor her
laugh rung so lightly since her first winter among them. Mrs. McLane
suggested charitably that her tedium vitae had run its course and she
was become a philosopher.
But Madeleine _reviva_ did not suggest the philosopher to the
most charitable eye (not even to Mrs. McLane's), particularly as
there was a "something" about her--was it repressed excitement?--
which had been quite absent from her old self, however vivacious.
It was Mrs. Abbott, a lady of unquenchable virtue, whose tongue was
more feared than that of any woman in San Francisco, who first
verbalized what every friend of Madeleine's secretly wondered: Was
there a man in the case? Many loyally cried, Impossible.
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