ernoon when I reach home. The dark is
_coming_ indeed, for it comes soon nowadays, but it has not yet come.

I go into the garden, and begin to pace up and down the gravel walks,
under the naked lime-trees that have forgotten their July perfume, and
are tossing their bare, cold arms in the evening wind.

Only _one_ of my old playfellows is left me. Jacky still stands on the
gravel as if the whole place belonged to him; still stands with his head
on one side, roguishly eying the sunset.

Thank Heaven, Jacky is still here, sly and nefarious, as when I bent
down to give him my tearful good-by kiss on my wedding-morning. I kneel
down, half laughing, half crying, on the damp walk, to stroke his round
gray head, and hear his dear cross croak. Whether he resents the
blackness of my appearance as being a mean imitation of his own, I do
not know, but he will not come near me; he hops stiffly away, and stands
eying me from the grass, with an unworthy affectation of not knowing who
I am. I am still wasting useless blandishments on him, when my attention
is distracted by the sound of footsteps on the walk.

I look up. Who is this man that is coming, stepping toward me in the
gloaming?

I am not long left in doubt. With a slight and sudden emotion of
surprised distaste, I see that it is Musgrave. I rise quickly to my
feet.

"It is you, is it?" I say, with a cold ungraciousness, for I have not
half forgiven him yet--still I bear a grudge against him--still I feel
an angry envy that Barbara died with her hand in his.

"Yes, it is I!"

He is dressed in deep mourning. His cheeks are hollow and pale; he looks
dejected, and yet fierce. We walk alongside of each other in silence for
a few yards.

"Why do not you ask what has brought me here?" he asks suddenly, with a
harsh abruptness. "I know that that is what you are thinking of."

"Yes," I reply, gravely, without looking at him, "it is!--what has?"

"I have come to bid you all good-by," he answers, in a low, quick voice,
with his eyes bent on the ground; "you know"--raising them, and
beginning to laugh hoarsely--"if--if--things had gone right--you would
have been my nearest relation by now."

I shudder.

"Yes," say I, "I know."

"I am going away," he goes on, raising his voice to a louder tone of
reckless unrest, "_where?_--God knows!--_I_ do not, and do not care
either!--going away for good!--I am going to let the abbey."

"To _let_ it!"

"You are _glad_!" he cries