“I am gone,” cried Edward, springing from his chair.

“No! no!” she replied, “you are my guest; remain here.  I have a household duty which calls me away.”  She laid a stress on these words.

She leant forward, and with a sad, sweet smile, she gave her hand to the friend of her lost Ferdinand, pressing his gently, and disappeared through the inner door.

Edward stood stunned, bewildered; then he paced the room with hasty steps, threw himself on the sofa, and took up one of the books that lay on the table, rather to have something in his hand, than to read.  It proved to be Young’s “Night Thoughts.”  He looked through it, and was attracted by many passages, which seemed, in his present frame of mind, fraught with peculiar meaning; yet his thoughts wandered constantly from the page to his dead friend.  The candles, unheeded both by Emily and him, burned on with long wicks, giving little light in the silent room, over which the red glare from the hearth shed a lurid glow.  Hurried footsteps sounded in the anteroom; the door was thrown open.

Edward looked up, and saw D’Effernay staring at him, and round the room, in an angry, restless manner.

Edward could not but think there was something almost unearthly in those dark looks and that towering form.

“Where is my wife?” was D’Effernay’s first question.

“She is gone to fulfill some household duty,” replied the other.

“And leaves you here alone in this miserable darkness!  Most extraordinary!—­indeed, most unaccountable!” and as he spoke he approached the table and snuffed the candles, with a movement of impatience.

“She left me here with old friends,” said Edward, with a forced smile.  “I have been reading.”

“What, in the dark?” inquired D’Effernay, with a look of mistrust.  “It was so dark when I came in, that you could not possibly have distinguished a letter.”

“I read for some time, and then I fell into a train of thought, which is usually the result of reading Young’s ‘Night Thoughts.’”

“Young!  I cannot bear that author.  He is so gloomy.”

“But you are fortunately so happy, that the lamentations of the lonely mourner can find no echo in your breast.”

“You think so!” said D’Effernay, in a churlish tone, and he pressed his lips together tightly, as Emily came into the room:  he went to meet her.

“You have been a long time away,” was his observation, as he looked into her eyes, where the trace of tears might easily be detected.  “I found our guest alone.”

“M. de Wensleben was good enough to excuse me,” she replied; “and then I thought you would be back immediately.”

They sat down to the table; coffee was brought, and the past appeared to be forgotten.

The conversation at first was broken by constant pauses.  Edward saw that Emily did all she could to play the hostess agreeably, and to pacify her husband’s ill-humor.