's lip caress Sigmund's loose black hair
that waved just beneath them.

Then I saw a figure--only a black shadow to my eyes which were dazzled
by the sun--come behind them. One hand was laid upon Helfen's shoulder,
another turned the child's chin. What a change! Friedhelm's grave face
smiled: Sigmund sprung aside, made a leap to his father, who stooped to
him, and clasping his arms tight round his neck was raised up in his
arms.

They were all satisfied--all smiling--all happy. I turned away. That was
a home--that was a meeting of three affections. What more could they
want? I shut the window--shut it all out, and myself with it into the
cold, feeling my lips quiver. It was very fine, this life of
independence and self-support, but it was dreadfully lonely.

The days went on. Adelaide was now Lady Le Marchant. She had written to
me again, and warned me once more to be careful what I was about. She
had said that she liked her life--at least she said so in her first two
or three letters, and then there fell a sudden utter silence about
herself, which seemed to me ominous.

Adelaide had always acted upon the assumption that Sir Peter was a far
from strong-minded individual, with a certain hardness and cunning
perhaps in relation to money matters, but nothing that a clever wife
with a strong enough sense of her own privileges could not overcome.

She said nothing to me about herself. She told me about Rome; who was
there; what they did and looked like; what she wore; what compliments
were paid to her--that was all.

Stella told me my letters were dull--and I dare say they were--and that
there was no use in her writing, because nothing ever happened in
Skernford, which was also true. And for Eugen, we were on exactly the
same terms--or rather no terms--as before. Opposite neighbors, and as
far removed as if we had lived at the antipodes.

My life, as time went on, grew into a kind of fossilized dream, in which
I rose up and lay down, practiced so many hours a day, ate and drank and
took my lesson, and it seemed as if I had been living so for years, and
should continue to live on so to the end of my days--until one morning
my eyes would not open again, and for me the world would have come to an
end.

CHAPTER XXI.

"And nearer still shall further be,
And words shall plague and vex and buffet thee."

It was December, close upon Christmas. Winter at last in real earnest. A
black frost. The earth bound in f