its white dress seemed
to be stepping down into the room from some slight visionary altitude,
looking with that which had seemed to me at first anxiety, which I
sometimes represented to myself now as a wistful curiosity, as if she
were looking for the life which might have been hers. Where was the
existence that had belonged to her, the sweet household place, the infant
she had left? She would no more recognize the man who thus came to look
at her as through a veil, with a mystic reverence, than I could recognize
her. I could never be her child to her, any more than she could be a
mother to me.

* * * * *

Thus time passed on for several quiet days. There was nothing to make us
give any special heed to the passage of time, life being very uneventful
and its habits unvaried. My mind was very much preoccupied by my father's
tenants. He had a great deal of property in the town which was so near
us,--streets of small houses, the best-paying property (I was assured) of
any. I was very anxious to come to some settled conclusion: on the one
hand, not to let myself be carried away by sentiment; on the other, not
to allow my strongly roused feelings to fall into the blank of routine,
as his had done. I was seated one evening in my own sitting-room, busy
with this matter,--busy with calculations as to cost and profit, with an
anxious desire to convince him, either that his profits were greater than
justice allowed, or that they carried with them a more urgent duty than
he had conceived.

It was night, but not late, not more than ten o'clock, the household
still astir. Everything was quiet,--not the solemnity of midnight
silence, in which there is always something of mystery, but the
soft-breathing quiet of the evening, full of the faint habitual sounds of
a human dwelling, a consciousness of life about. And I was very busy with
my figures, interested, feeling no room in my mind for any other thought.
The singular experience which had startled me so much had passed over
very quickly, and there had been no return. I had ceased to think of it;
indeed, I had never thought of it save for the moment, setting it down
after it was over to a physical cause without much difficulty. At this
time I was far too busy to have thoughts to spare for anything, or room
for imagination; and when suddenly in a moment, without any warning, the
first symptom returned, I started with it into determined resistance,
reso