“I am a happy woman, Mr. Nelson!  I think there is not a prouder or more blessed wife in all the land than I am this evening.”

Laugh, jest, and dance ruled the fleeting hours in the halls of the old country-house that night, and the presiding genius of the revel was still the beautiful hostess—­never more beautiful, never so winning before.  No one noticed that, by her orders, or her husband’s, the window through which she had beheld the goblin visage was closely curtained.  Or, this may have been an accidental disposition of the drapery, since no trace of her momentary alarm remained in her countenance or demeanor.

In the kitchen a double allowance of toddy was served out, by their master’s orders, to the men who had taken part in the interment on the hill-top.  And, in their noisy talk over their potations the vagrant was scarcely mentioned.

Only the pines, hoarser in their sough, by reason of the falling snow that clogged their boughs, chanted a requiem above the rough hillock at their feet.

“Man cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his name is covered with darkness!”

CHAPTER X.

Rosa.

“That is a new appearance.”

“Who can she be?”

“Unique—­is she not?” were queries bandied from one to another of the various parties of guests scattered through the extensive parlors of the most fashionable of Washington hotels, at the entrance of a company of five or six late arrivals.  All the persons composing it were well dressed, and had the carriage of people of means and breeding.  Beyond this there was nothing noteworthy about any of them, excepting the youngest of the three ladies of what seemed to be a family group.  When they stopped for consultation upon their plans for this, their first evening in the capital, directly beneath the central chandelier of the largest drawing-room, she stood, unintentionally, perhaps, upon the outside of the little circle, and not exerting herself to feign interest in the parley, sought amusement in a keen, but polite survey of the assembly, apparently in no wise disconcerted at the volley of glances she encountered in return.

If she were always in the same looks she wore just now, she must have been pretty well inured to batteries of admiration by this date in her sunny life.  She was below the medium of woman’s stature, round and pliant in form and limbs; in complexion dark as a gypsy but with a clear skin that let the rise and fall of the blood beneath be marked as distinctly as in that of the fairest blonde.  Her eyes were brown or black, it was hard to say which, so changeful were their lights and shades; and her other features, however unclassic in mould, if criticised separately, taken as a whole, formed a picture of surpassing fascination.  If her eyes and cleft chin meant mischief, her mouth engaged to make amends by smiles and seductive words,