her. Not now; it would be a cruelty.

"I knew the answer to that omen was somewhere," he said, "and it has
come."

He stepped over the threshold and stood one pace outside. The snow still
lay under foot, crusted with frost. The wind blew strongly, and soughed
in the stiff and leafless boughs. Overhead the flying moon at that
moment broke through a rack of cloud. At the same instant the red glow
of the fire-light found its way through the open door, and was reflected
on Paul's pallid face.

Greta gasped; a thrill passed through her. There, before her, eye to eye
with her once again, was the face she saw at the Ghyll!

CHAPTER XIV.

Paul went back home, carrying with him a crushed and broken spirit He
threw himself into a chair in a torpor of dejection. When the servants
spoke to him, he lifted to their faces two clouded eyes, heavy with
suffering, and answered their questions in few words. The maid laid the
supper, and told him it was ready. When she returned to clear the cloth,
the supper was untouched. Paul stepped up to his mother's room, and sat
down before the cold grate. The candle he carried with him burned out.

In the kitchen the servants of the farm and house gossipped long and
bickered vigorously. "Whatever ails Master Paul?" "Crossed in love,
maybe." "Shaf on sec woman's wit!" "Wherever has mistress gone?" "To buy
a new gown, mayhap." "Sista now how a lass's first thowt runs on
finery!" "Didsta hear nowt when you drove mistress to the rail, Reuben?"
"Nay, nowt." "Dusta say it war thee as drove to the station this
afternoon." "I wouldn't be for saying as it warn't." "Wilta be meeting
Master Hugh in the forenoon, Natt?" "Nay, ax Natt na questions. He's
fair tongue-tied to-neet, Natt is. He's clattering all of it to
hisself--swearing a bit, and sec as that."

When the servants had gone to bed, and the house was quiet, Paul still
sat in his mother's abandoned room. No one but he knew what he suffered
that night. He tried to comprehend the disaster that had befallen him.
Why had his mother shut herself in a convent? How should her love for
him require that she should leave him? To demand answers to these
questions was like knocking at the door of a tomb; the voice was silent
that could reply; there came no answer save the dull, heavy, hollow echo
of his own uncertain knock. All was blind, dumb, insensate torpor. No
outlook; no word; no stimulating pang.

His stupor was broken by a vision that for