eart fails me. Not yet
can I face the people, the lights--Barbara! I turn into the garden, and
pace up and down the broad, lonely walks: I pass and repass the cold
river-gods of the unplaying fountain. I stand in the black night of the
old cedar's shade. On any other day no possible consideration would have
induced me to venture within the jurisdiction of its inky arms after
nightfall; to-day, I feel as if no earthly or unearthly thing would have
power to scare me. How long I stay, I do not know. Now and then, I put
up my hands to my face, to ascertain whether my cheeks and eyes feel
less swollen and burning; whether the moist and searching night-air is
restoring me to my own likeness. At length, I dare stay no longer for
fear of being missed, and causing alarm in the household. So I enter,
steal up-stairs, and open the door of my boudoir, which Barbara and I,
when alone, make our usual sitting-room. The candles are unlit; and the
warm fire--evidently long undisturbed--is shedding only a dull and
deceiving light on all the objects over which it ranges. So far, at
least, Fortune favors me. Barbara and Vick are sitting on the
hearth-rug, side by side. As I enter, they both jump up, and run to meet
me. One of them gives little raptured squeaks of recognition. The other
says, in a tone of relief and pleasure:

"Here you are! I was growing so frightened about you! What can have made
you so late?"

"It was so--so--pleasant! The thrushes were singing so!" reply I, thus
happily inaugurating my career of invention.

"But, my dear child, the thrushes went to bed two hours ago!"

"Yes," I answer, at once entirely nonplussed, "so they did!"

"Where _have_ you been?" she asks, in a tone of ever-increasing
surprise. "Did you go farther than you intended?"

"I went--to see--the old Busseys," reply I, slowly; inwardly pondering,
with a stupid surprise, as to whether it can possibly have been no
longer ago than this very afternoon, that the old man mistook me for the
dead Belinda--and that I held the old wife's soapy hand in farewell in
mine; "the--old--Busseys!" I repeat, "and it took--me a long--_long_
time to get home!"

I shiver as I speak.

"You are cold!" she says, anxiously. "I hope you have not had a
chill--" (taking my hands in her own slight ones)--"yes--_starved_!--poor
dear hands; let me rub them!" (beginning delicately to chafe them).

Something in the tender solicitude of her voice, in the touch of her
gentle ha