ll come home."

"Surely he will not be long now: it is just ten (looking at a little gold
watch she drew from her girdle). It rains fast, Hannah: will you have
the goodness to look at the fire in the parlour?"

The woman rose: she opened a door, through which I dimly saw a passage:
soon I heard her stir a fire in an inner room; she presently came back.

"Ah, childer!" said she, "it fair troubles me to go into yond' room now:
it looks so lonesome wi' the chair empty and set back in a corner."

She wiped her eyes with her apron: the two girls, grave before, looked
sad now.

"But he is in a better place," continued Hannah: "we shouldn't wish him
here again. And then, nobody need to have a quieter death nor he had."

"You say he never mentioned us?" inquired one of the ladies.

"He hadn't time, bairn: he was gone in a minute, was your father. He had
been a bit ailing like the day before, but naught to signify; and when
Mr. St. John asked if he would like either o' ye to be sent for, he fair
laughed at him. He began again with a bit of a heaviness in his head the
next day--that is, a fortnight sin'--and he went to sleep and niver
wakened: he wor a'most stark when your brother went into t' chamber and
fand him. Ah, childer! that's t' last o' t' old stock--for ye and Mr.
St. John is like of different soart to them 'at's gone; for all your
mother wor mich i' your way, and a'most as book-learned. She wor the
pictur' o' ye, Mary: Diana is more like your father."

I thought them so similar I could not tell where the old servant (for
such I now concluded her to be) saw the difference. Both were fair
complexioned and slenderly made; both possessed faces full of distinction
and intelligence. One, to be sure, had hair a shade darker than the
other, and there was a difference in their style of wearing it; Mary's
pale brown locks were parted and braided smooth: Diana's duskier tresses
covered her neck with thick curls. The clock struck ten.

"Ye'll want your supper, I am sure," observed Hannah; "and so will Mr.
St. John when he comes in."

And she proceeded to prepare the meal. The ladies rose; they seemed
about to withdraw to the parlour. Till this moment, I had been so intent
on watching them, their appearance and conversation had excited in me so
keen an interest, I had half-forgotten my own wretched position: now it
recurred to me. More desolate, more desperate than ever, it seemed from
contrast. And how impos