urned away; and set forth eastward on my
walk, careless in which direction I traced my steps.

I felt little impatience, and no sense of fatigue; for in less than
two hours more I knew that I should see my wife again. Until then,
the present had no existence for me--I lived in the past and future.
I wandered indifferently along lonely bye-streets, and crowded
thoroughfares. Of all the sights which attend a night-walk in a great
city, not one attracted my notice. Uninformed and unobservant, neither
saddened nor startled, I passed through the glittering highways of
London. All sounds were silent to me save the love-music of my own
thoughts; all sights had vanished before the bright form that moved
through my bridal dream. Where was my world, at that moment? Narrowed to
the cottage in the country which was to receive us on the morrow. Where
were the beings in the world? All merged in one--Margaret.

Sometimes, my thoughts glided back, dreamily and voluptuously, to the
day when I first met her. Sometimes, I recalled the summer evenings when
we sat and read together out of the same book; and, once more, it was as
if I breathed with the breath, and hoped with the hopes, and longed with
the old longings of those days. But oftenest it was with the morrow that
my mind was occupied. The first dream of all young men--the dream of
living rapturously with the woman they love, in a secret retirement kept
sacred from friends and from strangers alike, was now my dream; to be
realised in a few hours, to be realised with my waking on the morning
which was already at hand!

For the last quarter of an hour of my walk, I must have been
unconsciously retracing my steps towards the house of Margaret's aunt. I
came in sight of it again, just as the sound of the neighbouring church
clocks, striking eleven, roused me from my abstraction. More cabs were
in the street; more people were gathered about the door, by this time.
Was all this bustle, the bustle of arrival or of departure? Was the
party about to break up, at an hour when parties usually begin? I
determined to go nearer to the house, and ascertain whether the music
had ceased, or not.

I had approached close enough to hear the notes of the harp and
pianoforte still sounding as gaily as ever, when the house-door was
suddenly flung open for the departure of a lady and gentleman. The light
from the hall-lamps fell on their faces; and showed me Margaret and Mr.
Mannion.

Going home alre