A Masked Battery

My Palestine holiday lasted, in some measure, all the way of
our journey home; and left me at the very moment when we
entered our Parisian hotel and met mamma. It left me then. All
the air of the place, much more all the style of mamma's dress
and manner, said at once that we had come into another world.
She was exquisitely dressed; that was usual; it could not have
been only that, nor the dainty appointments around her; - it
was something in her bearing, an indescribable something even
as she greeted us, which said, You have played your play - now
you will play mine. And it said, I cannot tell how, The cards
are in my hands.

Company engaged her that evening. I saw little of her till the
next day. At our late breakfast then we discussed many things.
Not much of Palestine; mamma did not want to hear much of
that. She had had it in our letters, she said. American
affairs were gone into largely; with great eagerness and
bitterness by both mamma and Aunt Gary; with triumphs over the
disasters of the Union army before Richmond, and other lesser
affairs in which the North had gained no advantage; invectives
against the President's July proclamation, his impudence and
his cowardice; and prophecies of ruin to him and his cause.
Papa listened and said little. I heard and was silent; with
throbbing forebodings of trouble.

"Daisy is handsomer than ever," my aunt remarked, when even
politics had exhausted themselves. But I wondered what she was
thinking of when she said it. Mamma lifted her eyes and
glanced me over.