ll please, while they talked and took no notice; and
then the neighbor passed on, and Catherine went into her house. It is
hard to be left out in the cold when others go into their cheerful
houses; but to be thus left outside of life, to speak and not be heard,
to stand unseen, astounded, unable to secure any attention! She had
thought they would be frightened, but it was not they who were
frightened. A great panic seized the woman who was no more of this world.
She had almost rejoiced to find herself back walking so lightly, so
strongly, finding everything easy that had been so hard; and yet but a
few minutes had passed, and she knew never more to be deceived, that she
was no longer of this world. What if she should be condemned to wander
forever among familiar places that knew her no more, appealing for a
look, a word, to those who could no longer see her, or hear her cry, or
know of her presence? Terror seized upon her, a chill and pang of fear
beyond description. She felt an impulse to fly wildly into the dark,
into the night, like a lost creature; to find again somehow, she could
not tell how, the door out of which she had come, and beat upon it wildly
with her hands, and implore to be taken home. For a moment she stood
looking round her, lost and alone in the wide universe; no one to speak
to her, no one to comfort her; outside of life altogether. Other rustic
figures, slow-stepping, leisurely, at their ease, went and came, one at a
time; but in this place, where every stranger was an object of curiosity,
no one cast a glance at her. She was as if she had never been.

Presently she found herself entering her own house. It was all shut and
silent,--not a window lighted along the whole front of the house which
used to twinkle and glitter with lights. It soothed her somewhat to see
this, as if in evidence that the place had changed with her. She went in
silently, and the darkness was as day to her. Her own rooms were all shut
up, yet were open to her steps, which no external obstacle could limit.
There was still the sound of life below stairs, and in the housekeeper's
room a cheerful party gathered round the fire. It was then that she
turned first, with some wistful human attraction, towards the warmth and
light rather than to the still places in which her own life had been
passed. Mrs. Prentiss, the housekeeper, had her daughter with her on a
visit, and the daughter's baby lay asleep in a cradle placed upon two
chair