ed--dead tired, she said to herself, both in
mind and body. She lay back in the carriage, trying to sink herself in
her own fatigue, to forget everything, to think of nothing. Outside the
night was mild, and the moon clear. For some days past, after the break
up of the long frost, there had been heavy rain. Now the rain had
cleared away, and in the air there was already an early promise of
spring. As she walked home from the village that afternoon she had felt
the buds and the fields stirring.

When they got home, Mrs. Boyce turned to her daughter at the head of the
stairs, "Shall I unlace your dress, Marcella?"

"Oh no, thank you. Can I help you?"

"No. Good-night."

"Mamma!" Marcella turned and ran after her. "I should like to know how
papa is. I will wait here if you will tell me."

Mrs. Boyce looked surprised. Then she went into her room and shut the
door. Marcella waited outside, leaning against the old oak gallery which
ran round the hall, her candle the one spot of light and life in the
great dark house.

"He seems to have slept well," said Mrs. Boyce, reappearing, and
speaking under her breath. "He has not taken the opiate I left for him,
so he cannot have been in pain. Good-night."

Marcella kissed her and went. Somehow, in her depression of nerve and
will, she was loth to go away by herself. The loneliness of the night,
and of her wing of the house, weighed upon her; the noises made by the
old boards under her steps, the rustling draughts from the dark passages
to right and left startled and troubled her; she found herself
childishly fearing lest her candle should go out.

Yet, as she descended the two steps to the passage outside her door, she
could have felt little practical need of it, for the moonlight was
streaming in through its uncovered windows, not directly, but reflected
from the Tudor front of the house which ran at right angles to this
passage, and was to-night a shining silver palace, every battlement,
window, and moulding in sharpest light and shade under the radiance of
the night. Beneath her feet, as she looked out into the Cedar Garden,
was a deep triangle of shadow, thrown by that part of the building in
which she stood; and beyond the garden the barred black masses of the
cedars closing up the view lent additional magic to the glittering
unsubstantial fabric of the moonlit house, which was, as it were,
embosomed and framed among them. She paused a moment, struck by the
strangeness