The old man closed his door softly, still without any hesitation, and Ida, grasping the broad rail of the staircase, waited breathlessly.  She heard him moving about, as leisurely and precisely as before; then all was still.  She stole to the door and opened it; the light was streaming into the room and fell athwart the bed in which he was lying, his eyes closed, his face calm and peaceful; she went on tiptoe to the bed and bent over him, and found that he was in a deep, profound sleep.  With a long breath of relief, she left him, and sat on the stairs and waited; for it was just possible that he might rise again and resume the dreadful walk—­that motion of death in life.

She waited for an hour, so absorbed in her anxiety that she did not remember the man she had left outside.  After another quarter of an hour she went to her father’s room, and found that he was still sleeping.  Then she remembered Stafford, remembered him with a start of discomfort and embarrassment.  Was he waiting there still?  She went down-stairs, and from the open door-way she saw dimly his figure under the trees.  There was something in the attitude of the erect figure that reminded her of a soldier on guard, a sentinel standing faithful at his post; and when she had waved her hand in dismissal she did not quite close the door, but watched him through the narrow opening as he paced slowly down the road, looking back at the house now and again as if to see if she wanted him.

Then she closed the door, signed to the dogs to be down before the fire, and went up to her room, after pausing beside her father’s door and listening to his regular breathing.  Her room was a large one—­nearly all the rooms in the place were large; and as she undressed herself slowly she looked round it with a novel sense of loneliness.  The tall shadows of her graceful yet girlish figure were cast grotesquely on the wall by the candles beside her glass.  She had never felt lonely before, though her life ever since she had arrived at the Hall might be called one almost of solitude.

She had been so absorbed in the duties which had so suddenly fallen upon her young shoulders that there had been no time in which to feel the want of companionship.  There had always been something to think of, something to do; her father demanded so much attention; the house, the land, the farm—­she had to look after them all; there had not been time to think even of herself; and it had never occurred to her that she was leading a life so different to that led by most girls.  But to-night the silence of the great house, large enough to hold fifty people, but sheltering only five persons—­her father and herself and the three servants—­weighed upon her.