what was going on within that
drawing-room, when it was at my option to be personally present there. My
relations with Zenobia, as yet unchanged - as a familiar friend, and associated
in the same life-long enterprise - gave me the right, and made it no more than
kindly courtesy demanded, to call on her. Nothing, except our habitual
independence of conventional rules, at Blithedale, could have kept me from
sooner recognizing this duty. At all events, it should now be performed.
    In compliance with this sudden impulse, I soon found myself actually within
the house, the rear of which, for two days past, I had been so sedulously
watching. A servant took my card, and immediately returning, ushered me
up-stairs. On the way, I heard a rich, and, as it were, triumphant burst of
music from a piano, in which I felt Zenobia's character, although heretofore I
had known nothing of her skill upon the instrument. Two or three canary-birds,
excited by this gush of sound, sang piercingly, and did their utmost to produce
a kindred melody. A bright illumination streamed through the door of the front
drawing-room; and I had barely stept across the threshold before Zenobia came
forward to meet me, laughing, and with an extended hand.
    »Ah, Mr. Coverdale,« said she, still smiling, but, as I thought, with a good
deal of scornful anger underneath, »it has gratified me to see the interest
which you continue to take in my affairs! I have long recognized you as a sort
of transcendental Yankee, with all the native propensity of your countrymen to
investigate matters that come within their range, but rendered almost poetical,
in your case, by the refined methods which you adopt for its gratification.
After all, it was an unjustifiable stroke, on my part - was it not? - to let
down the window-curtain!«
    »I cannot call it a very wise one,« returned I, with a secret bitterness
which, no doubt, Zenobia appreciated. »It is really impossible to hide anything,
in this world, to say nothing of the next. All that we ought to ask, therefore,
is, that the witnesses of our conduct, and the speculators on our motives,
should be capable of taking the highest view which the circumstances of the case
may admit. So much being secured, I, for one, would be most happy in feeling
myself followed, everywhere, by an indefatigable human sympathy.«
    »We must