Dorothea said:  ‘He behaved very beautifully.’

‘I looked at the General’s portrait while he besought us,’ Virginia replied.

‘One sees him in Victor, at Victor’s age.  Try to sleep.’

‘I do.  I pray that you may.’

Silence courted slumber.  Their interchange of speech from the posture of bodies on their backs, had been low and deliberate, in the tone of the vaults.  Dead silence recalled the strangeness of it.  The night was breathless; their open window a peril bestowing no boon.  They were mutually haunted by sound of the gloomy query at the nostrils of each when drawing the vital breath.  But for that, they thought they might have slept.

Bed spake to bed: 

‘The words of Mr. Stuart Rem last Sunday!’ ’He said:  “Be just.”  Could one but see direction!’

‘In obscurity, feeling is a guide.’

‘The heart.’

‘It may sometimes be followed.’

‘When it concerns the family.’

‘He would have the living, who are seeking peace, be just.’

‘Not to assume the seat of justice.’

Again they lay as tombstone effigies, that have committed the passage of affairs to another procession of the Ages.

There was a gentle sniff, in hopeless confirmation of the experience of its predecessors.  A sister to it ensued.

’Could Victor have spoken so, without assurance in his conscience, that his entreaty was righteously addressed to us? that we . . .’

‘And no others!’

‘I think of his language.  He loves the child.’

‘In heart as in mind, he is eminently gifted; acknowledgeing error.’

‘He was very young.’

The huge funereal minutes conducted their sonorous hearse, the hour.

It struck in the bed-room:  Three.

No more than three of the clock, it was the voice telling of half the precious restorative night-hours wasted.

Now, as we close our eyelids when we would go to sleep, so must we, in expectation of the peace of mind granting us the sweet oblivion, preliminarily do something which invokes, that we may obtain it.

‘Dear,’ Dorothea said.

‘I know indeed,’ said Virginia.

‘We may have been!’

‘Not designingly.’

’Indeed not.  But harsh it may be named, if the one innocent is to be the sufferer.’

‘The child can in no sense be adjudged guilty.’

‘It is Victor’s child.’

‘He adores the child.’

Wheels were in mute motion within them; and presently the remark was tossed-up: 

‘In his coming to us, it is possible to see paternal solicitude’

Thence came fruit of reflection: 

‘To be instrumental as guides to a tender young life!’

Reflection heated with visions: 

‘Once our dream!’