tely glad to see them.

At least there will be some one to occupy two more of these numberless
chairs; two more for the stolid family portraits to eye; two voices, nay
_three_, for _I_ shall speak then, to drown the sounding silence.

It is time they should be here. The carriage went to the station more
than an hour ago. I sit down in a window-seat that commands the park,
and look along the drive by which the general went this morning.

Dear Roger! I will practise calling him "Roger" when I am by myself, and
then perhaps I may be able to address him by it when he comes home. I
will say, "How are you, Roger?"

I have fallen into a pleasant reverie, with my head leaned against the
curtain, in which I see myself giving glib utterance to this formula, as
I stand in a blue gown--Roger likes me in blue--and a blue cap--I look
older in a cap--while he precipitates himself madly--

My reverie breaks off. Some one has entered, and is standing by me. It
is a footman, with a telegram on a salver. Albeit I know the trivial
causes for which people employ the telegraph-wires nowadays, I never can
get over my primal deadly fear of those yellow envelopes, that seem
emblems and messengers of battle, murder, and sudden death. As I tear it
open, a hundred horrible impossible possibilities flash across my brain.
Algy and Barbara have both been killed in a railway-accident, and have
telegraphed to tell me so; the same fate has happened to Roger, and he
has adopted the same course.

"_Algernon Grey to Lady Tempest._
"Cannot come: not allowed. _He_ has turned nasty."

The paper drops into my lap, as I draw a long breath of mingled relief
and disappointment. A whole long evening--long night of this solitude
before me! perhaps much more, for they do not even say that they will
come to-morrow! I _must_ utter my disappointment to somebody, even if it
is only the footman.

"They are not coming!" say I, plaintively; then, recollecting and
explaining myself, "I mean, they need not send in dinner! I will not
have any!" I _cannot_ stand another repast--three times longer than the
last too--for one _can_ abridge luncheon, seated in lorn dignity between
the staring dead on the walls, and the obsequious living.

As soon as the man is fairly out of the room, I cry again. Yes, though
my hair is readjusted, though I spent more than a quarter of an hour in
bathing my eyes, and restoring some semblance of white to their lids,
though I had