Page:Alice Lauder.pdf/238

IT was a very dreary, rainy, windy, south-westerly, and chilly afternoon, some days after the ball; and all the members of Mrs. Damon’s household hugged the fireside as closely as possible, and thanked their stars that they were not obliged to go out of the house in such weather as this. Clare had given up the unequal contest with the draughts from the back-door, and the dark presentiments of bronchitis which haunted her, and had found no place of safety other than her comfortable bed, where, with all the magazines in the house, a packet of English letters, and a variety of patent medicines close at hand, she bade defiance to colds and sore throats from that comfortable coign of vantage. Alice was vainly trying to fight down the depression and self-depreciation that are apt to follow any unwonted excitement, by the aid of afternoon tea and American novels of extra strength, seated beside a kindly but snappy