The dining-room being sombre, one might have said it accorded with the master, whose frown had not all cleared away. Harriet was speaking. "What of Molly? Was there a scene at parting with her voluntarily given-up offspring? For her moods, like her tempers, used to delight in being somewhat inconsistent and mixed." "She has in no way changed," replied Austen. Was it this flat conciseness in all he said that made levity irresistible to Harriet in turn? "My interview with her was confined to business. That ended, she told me, as an afterthought, apparently, that the coloured woman was going to remain with her, and she supposed Alexina could manage on the train. She also told me that her husband had severed connection with the legation and was going back to Paris. Alexina was not with them at the hotel, but with her uncle, Senator Randolph, from whose house Molly was married." "And Molly's parting with the child--" "Was a piece with it all, tears and relief, just as you would have expected." "And the husband's, this Mr. Garnier's, attitude?" "Was enigmatical; how far he understands the situation I had no means of judging." "I'm sorry for the child, though," said Harriet suddenly, "for if there is anything of Molly in her, life according to the Blair standard may pall, and," whimsically, "her mixture of natures be vexed within her." Austen took the Blairs seriously, and at any time he disliked the personal or the playful. He spoke coldly. "Having given the child over to you from the moment of arrival, of this initiatory tone you are taking I shall say no more. Duties you assume you do best your own way." Harriet arched her brows. "You mean, having found better results followed the withdrawal of your oversight of me as mistress of our house, you are going to let me alone in this?" "Exactly," said her brother, "and therefore on the subject, now or hereafter, I shall say no more." And it was eminently characteristic of him that he never did. Meanwhile up-stairs the child had gone through with the bath and the supper like an automaton in Nelly's hands. "She said 'yes' when I asked her anything," Nelly reported later to the cook; "or she said 'no'. And her lips were set that hard she might a'most have been Mr. Austen's own child."