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 chairs, outside the little circle of women round the table, one of whom was Jervis, Lady Mary’s maid.  Jervis sat and worked and cried, and mixed her words with little sobs.  “I never thought as I should have had to take another place,” she said.  “Brown and me, we made sure of a little something to start upon.  He’s been here for twenty years, and so have you, Mrs. Prentiss; and me, as nobody can say I wasn’t faithful night and day.”

“I never had that confidence in my lady to expect anything,” Prentiss said.

“Oh, mother, don’t say that:  many and many a day you’ve said, ’When my lady dies—­’”

“And we’ve all said it,” said Jervis.  “I can’t think how she did it, nor why she did it; for she was a kind lady, though appearances is against her.”

“She was one of them, and I’ve known a many, as could not abide to see a gloomy face,” said the housekeeper.  “She kept us all comfortable for the sake of being comfortable herself, but no more.”

“Oh, you are hard upon my lady!” cried Jervis, “and I can’t bear to hear a word against her, though it’s been an awful disappointment to me.”