time the dead stillness of the house brought more calm
to her agitated spirit, and quieted the blood that coursed so wildly
through her veins.

She rose and looked all through the room again, to convince herself
that she really was by herself. There was a recess where she kept her
dresses, closed by a curtain, and there he must have stood; she
shivered again as she saw the crumpled folds. To rid herself of the
odious recollection, she took down a book from her bookshelves, and
settled herself with it in a corner of the sofa. But to read it was not
so easy, she could not fix her scared ideas to the black letters before
her.

She found it insufferably hot and close in that small room, but she
feared to stir out of it in case of another ambush. She put down her
book, took off the dress that confined her movements, and felt relieved
as she walked up and down, with uncovered neck and arms, plaiting up
her long dark hair for the night.

Her candle was placed so near the glass, that she might have seen
herself quite easily; only her eyes were fixed upon the floor, and her
thoughts were far away.

In this manner more than an hour elapsed, and her weariness began to
warn her, that it was time to seek some rest, when the door of the
adjoining room was cautiously opened, and she heard a light step cross
it, and a knock at her bolted door. After the first thrill of momentary
terror, the recollection came, that the house had been shut up, the
miscreant flown, and Walter not come home.

"Is that you Christel?" she called through the door. A very subdued
"yes" came back to her. The old servant often used to come to her
before going to bed, to consult her in some kitchen dilemma. Without
farther demur, Helen unbolted the door--It was Walter who stood before
her in the darkness of the doorway.

"It is I;" he stammered, with a beseeching, almost frightened glance;
both faces turned crimson in a moment.

"Helen!" he began again, and she started when she heard him call her by
her Christian name. She felt his moody eager eyes upon her. In the
dress in which she now stood before him, she might have appeared in any
ballroom; only it had never so happened that he had occasion to see her
in any other than in her dark high morning-dresses of almost conventual
cut.

"What brings you here?" she asked in a tone of cool severity, that was
to serve as a mask to the emotion within. "How could you so mislead me?
Could not you have told me it