One evening Adolphus took his horn, and, attended by wife and child, went out to walk.  He meant to send a strain from the highest of the accessible coast-rocks.  But Elizabeth changed his plan.  The time was good for what she had to say.  Instead of expending his enthusiasm on a flourish of notes, he was called upon to manifest it in a noble resolution.

When Elizabeth invited her father to a prospect sylvan rather than marine, to the shady path on the border of the wood between it and the prison, Montier, easily drawn from any plan that concerned his own inclination merely, let his daughter lead, and she was responsible for all that followed in the history of that little family.  So love defers to love, with divine courtesy, through all celestial movements.

After playing a few airs, Montier’s anticipated evening ended, and another set in.  The sympathies of a condition, the opposite to that of which he had been so happily conscious, pressed too closely against him.  The musician could not, for the life of him, have played with becoming spirit through any one of all the strains of victory he knew.

Near him, under a tulip-tree, sat Pauline, with her knitting in her hand, the image of peace.  Not so Elizabeth.  She was doubting, troubled.  But when the bird her father’s music moved to sing was still, she spoke, as she had promised herself she would, asking a question, of whose answer she had not the slightest doubt.

“Papa, do you know that Mr. Laval is going away?”

“Why, yes, that’s the talk, I believe.”

“Will they get somebody to take his place?”

“Of course.  There’s a prisoner on hand yet, you know,—­and the house to look after.”

“A big house, too, and dreadful dreary,” remarked the mother of Elizabeth.  “Laval’s wife used to say, when she came up to see me sometimes, it was like being a prisoner to live in that building.  And now she’s dead and gone, he begins to think the same.”

“Suppose we take Laval’s place,” suggested Montier, looking very seriously at his wife; but the suggestion did not alarm her.  Adolphus often expressed his satisfaction with existing arrangements by making propositions of exchange for other states of life, propositions which never disturbed his wife or daughter.  They understood these demonstrations of his deep content.  Therefore, at these words of his, Pauline smiled, and for the reason that the words could draw forth such a smile Elizabeth looked grave.

“I wish we could, papa,” said she.

“You wish we could, you child?” exclaimed her mother, wondering.  “It looks so pleasant, eh?” and the fair face of Pauline turned to the prison, and surveyed it, shuddering.

“For the prisoner’s sake,” said Elizabeth.  “Who knows but a cruel keeper may be put in Laval’s place?  He is almost dead with grief, that prisoner is,—­I know by his face.  After he is gone, there won’t be any prisoner there,—­and we could make it very pleasant.”