f Mr.
Arnold from Polesdean had not called me away to new duties downstairs.

The rest of the day is indescribable. I believe no one in the house
really knew how it passed. The confusion of small events, all huddled
together one on the other, bewildered everybody. There were dresses
sent home that had been forgotten--there were trunks to be packed and
unpacked and packed again--there were presents from friends far and
near, friends high and low. We were all needlessly hurried, all
nervously expectant of the morrow. Sir Percival, especially, was too
restless now to remain five minutes together in the same place. That
short, sharp cough of his troubled him more than ever. He was in and
out of doors all day long, and he seemed to grow so inquisitive on a
sudden, that he questioned the very strangers who came on small errands
to the house. Add to all this, the one perpetual thought in Laura's
mind and mine, that we were to part the next day, and the haunting
dread, unexpressed by either of us, and yet ever present to both, that
this deplorable marriage might prove to be the one fatal error of her
life and the one hopeless sorrow of mine. For the first time in all
the years of our close and happy intercourse we almost avoided looking
each other in the face, and we refrained, by common consent, from
speaking together in private through the whole evening. I can dwell on
it no longer. Whatever future sorrows may be in store for me, I shall
always look back on this twenty-first of December as the most
comfortless and most miserable day of my life.

I am writing these lines in the solitude of my own room, long after
midnight, having just come back from a stolen look at Laura in her
pretty little white bed--the bed she has occupied since the days of her
girlhood.

There she lay, unconscious that I was looking at her--quiet, more quiet
than I had dared to hope, but not sleeping. The glimmer of the
night-light showed me that her eyes were only partially closed--the
traces of tears glistened between her eyelids. My little
keepsake--only a brooch--lay on the table at her bedside, with her
prayer-book, and the miniature portrait of her father which she takes
with her wherever she goes. I waited a moment, looking at her from
behind her pillow, as she lay beneath me, with one arm and hand resting
on the white coverlid, so still, so quietly breathing, that the frill
on her night-dress never moved--I waited, looking at her,