drive to the Hall was such a short one, it hardly seemed to her they
were seated before they were driving up the leafless avenue, where the
trees loomed unnaturally large and black in the frosty air, and the dead
leaves whirled in great wild drifts under the horse's feet. The gloom
and desolation were here before them too. When they had gone away,
nearly six months before, those bleak avenues had been leafy arcades,
where the birds sang all the bright day long, flowers had bloomed
wherever her eye rested, and red roses and sweetbrier had twined
themselves around the low windows and stone pillars of the portico. Now
the trees were writhing skeletons, the flowers dead with the summer,
nothing left of the roses but rattling brown stalks, and the fish-pond
lying under the frowning wintry sky like a sheet of steel.

She went up the stone steps and into the hall, still shivering miserably
under her wraps, and saw Grace, and Eeny, and the servants assembled to
welcome them, and listened like one in a dream. It all seemed so flat,
and dead, and unsatisfying, and the old time and the old memories were
back at her heart, until she almost went wild. She could see how Eeny
and Grace looked a little afraid of her, and how differently they
greeted her father; and how heartily and unaffectedly glad he was to be
with them once more. And then she was toiling wearily up the long, wide
stairway, followed by faithful Eunice, and had the four walls of her own
little sitting room around her at last.

How pretty the room was! A fire burned brightly in the glittering steel
grate, the curtains were drawn, for it was already dusk, that short
November afternoon; and the ruddy, cheery light sparkled on the
pictures, and the book-case, and the inlaid table, and the two little
vases of scarlet geraniums Grace had planted there.

Outside, in contrast to all this warmth, and brightness, and comfort,
she could hear the lamentable sighing of the wild November wind, and the
groaning of the tortured trees. But it brought no sense of comfort to
her, and she sat drearily back while Eunice dressed her for dinner, and
stared blankly into the fire, wondering if her whole life was to go on
like this. Only twenty-one, and life such a hopeless blank already! She
could look forward to her future life--a long, long vista of days, and
every day like this.

By-and-by the dinner-bell rang, arousing her from her dismal reverie,
and she went down stairs, never taking