It was his desk!  She was sitting in his chair!

She dropped the book, and, rising abruptly, crossed quickly to the other side of the room.  Then she turned, hesitatingly, and went back.  This was his desk—­his chair, in which he had worked so faithfully for the man who lay dying beyond the door.  For him whom they all loved—­whose last hours they were were to soothe.  Wars and schisms may part our bodies, but stronger ties unite our souls.  Through Silas Whipple, through his mother, Virginia knew that she was woven of one piece with Stephen Brice.  In a thousand ways she was reminded, lest she drive it from her belief.  She might marry another, and that would not matter.

She sank again into his chair, and gave herself over to the thoughts crowding in her heart.  How the threads of his life ran next to hers, and crossed and recrossed them.  The slave auction, her dance with him, the Fair, the meeting at Mr. Brinsmade’s gate,—­she knew them all.  Her love and admiration for his mother.  Her dreams of him—­for she did dream of him.  And now he had saved Clarence’s life that she might marry her cousin.  Was it true that she would marry Clarence?  That seemed to her only a dream.  It had never seemed real.  Again she glanced at the signature in the book, as if fascinated by the very strength of it.  She turned over a few pages of the book, “Supposing the defendant’s counsel essays to prove by means of—­” that was his writing again, a marginal, note.  There were marginal notes on every page—­even the last was covered with them, And then at the end, “First reading, February, 1858.  Second reading, July, 1858.  Bought with some of money obtained by first article for M. D.”  That capacity for work, incomparable gift, was what she had always coveted the most.  Again she rested her elbows on the desk and her chin on her hands, and sighed unconsciously.

She had not heard the step on the stair.  She had not seen the door open.  She did not know that any one wage in the room until she heard his voice, and then she thought that she was dreaming.

“Miss Carvel!”

“Yes?” Her head did not move.  He took a step toward her.

“Miss Carvel!”

Slowly she raised her face to his, unbelief and wonder in her eyes, —­unbelief and wonder and fright.  No; it could not be he.  But when she met the quality of his look, the grave tenderness of it, she trembled, and our rendered her own to the page where his handwriting quivered and became a blur.

He never knew the effort it cost her to rise and confront him.  She herself had not measured or fathomed the power which his very person exhaled.  It seemed to have come upon him suddenly.  He needed not to have spoken for her to have felt that.  What it was she could not tell.  She knew alone that it was nigh irresistible, and she grasped the back of the chair as though material support might sustain her.

“Is he—­dead?”

She was breathing hard.