“Yes, a little.  You can finish to-morrow.”

Then she laid down the simple letter, and sat very still for a little while.  Her heart was busy.  There is a solitary place that girdles our life into which it is good to enter at the close of every day.  There we may sit still with our own soul, and commune with it; and out of its peace pass easily into the shadowy kingdom of sleep, and find a little space of rest prepared.  So Charlotte sat in quiet meditation until Sophia was fathoms deep below the tide of life.  Sight, speech, feeling, where were they gone?  Ah! when the door is closed, and the windows darkened, who can tell what passes in the solemn temple of mortality?  Are we unvisited then?  Unfriended?  Uncounselled?

         &nb
sp;                                     “Behold! 
     The solemn spaces of the night are thronged
     By bands of tender dreams, that come and go
     Over the land and sea; they glide at will
     Through all the dim, strange realms of men asleep,
     And visit every soul.”

CHAPTER VI.

THE DAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS.

     “Still to ourselves in every place consigned. 
      Our own felicity we make or find.”

     “Catch, then, oh, catch the transient hour! 
        Improve each moment as it flies. 
      Life’s a short summer, man a flower;
        He dies, alas! how soon he dies!”

There are days which rise sadly, go on without sunshine, and pass into night without one gleam of color.  Life, also, has these pallid, monotonous hours.  A distrust of all things invades the soul, and physical inertia and mental languor make daily existence a simple weight.  It was Christmas-time, but the squire felt none of the elation of the season.  He was conscious that the old festal preparations were going on, but there was no response to them in his heart.  Julius had arrived, and was helping Sophia to hang the holly and mistletoe.  But Sandal knew that his soul shrank from the nephew he had called into his life; knew that the sound of his voice irritated him, that his laugh filled him with resentment, that his very presence in the house seemed to desecrate it, and to slay for him the very idea of home.

He was sitting in the “master’s room,” wondering how the change had come about.  But he found nothing to answer the wonder, because he was looking for some palpable wrong, some distinctive time or cause.  He was himself too simple-hearted to reflect that it is seldom a great fault which destroys liking for a person.  A great fault can be forgiven.  It is small personal offences constantly repeated; little acts of meanness, and, above all, the petty plans and provisions of a selfish nature.  Besides which, the soul has often marvellous intuitions, unmasking men and things; premonitions, warnings, intelligences, that it cannot doubt and cannot explain.

Inside the house there was a pleasant air and stir of preparation; the rapid movements of servants, the shutting and opening of doors, the low laughter of gay hearts well contented with the time and the circumstances.  Outside, the mesmerizing snow was falling with a soft, silent persistence.  The squire looked sadly at the white hills, and the white park, and the branches bending under their load, and the sombre sky, gray upon darker gray.