The talking and clattering melted vaguely into my ears; I was a lay-figure in the scene, and my soul wandered elsewhere.  Mr. Somers began to fidget gently, which father perceiving, rose from the table.  Soon after the guests departed.  The remains of the feast vanished; the fires burnt down, “winding sheets” wrapped the flame of the candles, and suppressed gaping set in.

The flowers, left to themselves, began to give out odors which perfumed the rooms.  I went about extinguishing the waning candles and stifling the dying fires, finished my work, and was going upstairs when I heard Veronica playing, and stopped to listen.  It was not a paean nor a lament that she played, but a fluctuating, vibratory air, expressive of mutation.  I hung over the stair-railing after she had ceased, convinced that she had been playing for herself a farewell, which freed me from my bond to her.  Mr. Somers came along the hall with a candle, and I waited to ask him if I could do anything for his comfort.

“My dear,” he said with apprehension, “your sister is a genius, I think.”

“In music—­yes.”

“What a deplorable thing for a woman!”

“A woman of genius is but a heavenly lunatic, or an anomaly sphered between the sexes; do you agree?”

He laughed, and pushed his spectacles up on his forehead.

“My dear, I am astonished that Ben’s choice fell as it did—­”

“Good-night, sir,” I said so loudly that he almost dropped his candle, and I retired to my room, taking a chair by the fire, with a sigh of relief.  After a while Ben and Veronica came up.

“It is a cold night,” I remarked.

“I am in an enchanted palace,” said Ben, “where there is no weather.”

“Cassy, will you take these pins out of my hair?” asked Verry, seating herself in an easy-chair.  “Ben, we will excuse you.”

“How good of you.”  He strode across the passage, went into her room, and shut the door.

“There, Verry, I have unbound your hair.”

“But I want to talk.”

I took her hand, and led her out.  She stood before her door for a moment silently, and then gave a little knock.  No answer came.  She knocked again; the same silence as before.  At last she was obliged to open it herself, and enter without any bidding.

“Which will rule?” I thought, as I slipped down the back stairs, and listened at the kitchen door.  I heard nothing.  Finding an old cloak in the entry, I wrapped myself in it and left the house.  The moon was out-riding black, scudding clouds, and the wind moaned round the sea, which looked like a vast, wrinkled serpent in the moonlight.

I walked to Gloster Point, and rested under the lee of the lighthouse, but could not, when I made the attempt, see to read the inscription inside my watch, by the light of the lantern.  I must have fallen asleep from fatigue, still holding it in my hand; for when I started homeward, there was a pale reflection of light in the east, and the sea was creeping quietly toward it with a murmuring morning song.