Nor were these all to assure me that, after a year of melancholy and eventful absence, I looked again upon the precincts of home.  A little farther on rose the gray wall and tower of the library and belfry, half concealed by its heavy coating of ivy, glossy and dark, and shutting away all other view of the mansion.  Beyond these last was the pavilion my father had built for the playhouse of his children, through the open lattice-door of which I saw a girl seated at her work, with graceful, bending neck, and half-averted face.  A moment later, Claude Bainrothe lounged across the sward, cigar in hand.  At his approach, the face within was turned, and I recognized, at a glance, that of my young aurora-like companion of the raft, Ada Greene.  Then gazing cautiously around, as if to elude observation (never dreaming of the eye dropped like a bird’s upon him), he lifted the rosy face in his hand and kissed it thrice right loverly!

I saw no more—­I would not witness more—­for had I not learned already all that I asked or ought to know?  Well might the dear old chimes ring out their Sabbath welcome to one who had obeyed their summons from her childhood up to womanhood!  Well might the summer air bear on its wings greeting of familiar odors, lost and found!

This was no idle dream, no mirage of a vagrant brain like that sea-picture, or that wild vision at Beauseincourt, but sober, and sad, and strange reality.  I understood my position from that moment, geographically as well as physically.  I was a prisoner in the house of Basil Bainrothe (while he, perchance, reigned lordly in my own); that house whose hidden arcana I had never explored, and which, beyond its parlor and exterior, was to me as the dwelling of a stranger.

Derisively deferential, he had resigned to me this secluded chamber in the ell—­his own particular sanctum, I remember to have heard—­and betaken himself, in all probability, to the more spacious mansion of his former neighbor.

Far wiser, even if sadder, than I went up its rounds, did I descend that ladder!

Half an hour after I had entered it, and with new hope, I emerged from the bath-room as fresh as a naiad, having first abstracted from the tool-box of the glazier two tiny chisels of different sizes, and a small lump of putty, which I secreted, on my first opportunity, in my favorite hiding-place—­a hollow in the post of my bedstead—­an accidental discovery of mine, made during Mrs. Clayton’s first illness, since which I had always insisted on making up my own bed, much to her relief.

My conscience so disturbed me on the score of this theft, that I hastened to secrete my only remaining piece of gold in the glazier’s box; ill-judged, as this appeared to me on reflection.  The boy was an apprentice, evidently, and might else, I thought, at the time, have been the loser.  I feared to add a line, and dared not seek a passing word with him, so carefully was I watched.