“You are not going?” cry I, eagerly, laying my hand on his coat-sleeve, “do not! why should you? there is no hurry.  Let me have some one to help me to keep the ghosts at bay as long as I can!” then, with a dim consciousness of having said something rather odd, I add, reddening, “I shall be going in directly, and you may go then.”

He reseats himself.  A tiny air is ruffling the flower-beds, giving a separate soft good-night to each bloom.

“And what happened to Algy and Barbara?” he says presently.

“Happened?  Nothing!” I answer, absently.

“Very brutal of Algy and Barbara, then!” he says, more in the way of a reflection than a remark.

“Very brutal of father, you should say!” reply I, roused by the thought of my parent to a fresh attack of active and lively resentment.

“I have no doubt I should if I knew him.”

“He would not let them come!” say I, explanatorily, “for what reason? for none—­he never has any reasons, or if he has, he does not give them.  I sometimes think” (laughing maliciously) “that you will not be unlike him, when you grow old and gouty.”

“Thank you.”

“You have no father, have you?” continue I, presently; “no, I remember your telling me so at the Linkesches Bad.  Well” (laughing again, with a certain grim humor), “I would not fret about it too much, if I were you—­it is a relationship that has its disadvantages.”

He laughs a little dryly.

“On whatever other heads I may quarrel with Providence, at least no one can accuse me of ever murmuring at its decrees in this respect.”

We have risen.  The darkness creeps on apace, warmly, without damp or chillness; but still, on it comes!  I have to face the prospect of my great and gloomy house all through the lagging hours of the long black night!

“They will come to-morrow, certainly, I suppose?” (interrogatively).

“Not certainly, at all!” reply I, with an energetic despondence in my voice; “quite the contrary! most likely not! most likely not the day after either, nor the day after that—­”

“And if they do not” (with an accent of sincere compassion), “what will you do?”

“What I have done to-day, I suppose,” I answer dejectedly; “cry till my cheeks are sore! You may not believe me” (passing my bare fingers lightly over them as I speak), “but they feel quite raw.  I wonder” (with a little dismal laugh) “why tears were made salt!—­they would not blister one half so much if they were fresh water.”

He has drawn a pace-or two nearer to me.  In this light one has to look closely at any object that one wishes specially and narrowly to observe; and I myself have pointed out the peculiarities of my countenance to him, so I cannot complain if he scrutinizes me with a lengthy attention.

“It is going to be such a dark night!” I say, with a slight shiver; “and if the wind gets up, I know that I shall lie awake all night, thinking that the gen—­that Roger is drowned!  Do you not think” (looking round apprehensively) “that it is rising already?  See how those boughs are waving!”