“Leave my brother alone.”

“You see nothing but ’the sun which makes a dust, and the grass which looks green.’”

Miss Munster hoped I was cared for.  How gay Desmond was! she had not seen such a look in his face in a long time.  And how strongly he was marked with the family traits.

“How am I marked, May?” asked Ben.

“Oh, we know worse eccentrics than you are.  What are you up to now?  You are not as frank as Desmond.”

He laughed as he looked at me, and then Adelaide called to us that it was time to leave.

We were among the last; the carriage was waiting.  We made our bows to Mrs. Munster, who complained of not having seen more of us.  “You are a favorite of Mrs. Hepburn’s, Miss Morgeson, I am told.  She is a remarkable woman, has great powers.”  I mentioned my one interview with her.  Guests were going upstairs with smiles, and coming down without, released from their company manners.  We rode home in silence, except that Adelaide yawned fearfully, and then we toiled up the long stairs, separating with a tired, “good-night.”

I extinguished my candle by dropping my shawl upon it, and groped in vain for matches over the tops of table and shelf.

“To bed in the dark, then,” I said, pulling off my gloves and the band, from my head, for I felt a tightness in it, and pulled out the hairpins.  But a desire to look in the glass overcame me.  I felt unacquainted with myself, and must see what my aspect indicated just then.

I crept downstairs, to the dining-room, passed my hands over the sideboard, the mantel shelf, and took the round of the dinner-table, but found nothing to light my candle with.

“The fire may not be out in the parlor,” I thought; “it can be lighted there.”  I ran against the hatstand in the hall, knocking a cane down, which fell with a loud noise.  The parlor door was ajar; the fire was not out, and Desmond was before it, watching its decay.

“What is it?” he asked.

“The candle,” I stammered, confused with the necessity of staying to have it lighted, and the propriety of retreating in the dark.

“Shall I light it?”

I stepped a little further inside the door and gave it to him.  He grew warm with thrusting it between the bars of the grate, and I grew chilly.  Shivering, and with chattering teeth, I made out to say, “A piece of paper would do it.”  Raising his head hastily, it came crash against the edge of the marble shelf.  Involuntarily I shut the door, and leaned against it, to wait for the effect of the blow; but feeling a pressure against the outside, I yielded to it, and moved aside.  Mrs. Somers entered, with a candle flaring in one hand, and holding with the other her dressing-gown across her bosom.

“What are you doing here?” she asked harshly, but in a whisper, her eyes blazing like a panther’s.

“Doing?” I replied; “stay and see.”

She swept along, and I followed, bringing up close to Desmond, who had his hand round his head, and was very pale, either from the effect of the blow or some other cause.  Even the flush across his cheeks had faded.  She looked at him sharply; he moved his hands from his head, and met her eyes.  “I am not drunk, you see,” he said in a low voice.  She made an insulting gesture toward me, which meant, “Is this an adventure of yours?”