CHAPTER V.

THEN AND NOW.

ALL the day, after Hester's departure, John Morley suffered under an access of morbid and despairing thoughts. The stillness of his home was more profound than ever, now that he had lost the soft footstep of his daughter moving about his room, and her low caressing voice speaking to him from time to time. Lawson entered the room once, after knocking loudly at the door and receiving no answer; he found his master lying half across his desk, so absorbed in reverie as to be unconscious of his presence, until he touched him on the shoulder. Then he lifted up his face, greyer and more haggard than ever, with eyes burning more deeply in their sockets, while his head trembled as if with palsy. It was the last interruption but one which broke in upon his melancholy memories.

This other interruption was the entrance of the young maid-servant, who, with a tearful face, came to tell her master that a brother of hers was coming home to pay his last visit

there, before emigrating to America. If he could only spare her till Monday evening, Lawson's mother had promised to look after the house and wait upon him.

John Morley said "Go," almost impatiently. It signified nothing to him who performed the small services he required.

Madame Lawson had promised Hester to go about nine o'clock, or a little later, after her son's comfort had been provided for; and to stay all night and the next day in John Morley's house. The girl wanted to leave at four, and it seemed but a small thing to her to ask the poor woman her mistress gave a shelter to, to fill up the space between her own departure and the arrival of Madame Lawson. She asked Rose boldly; and Rose seized the chance with the passionate eagerness of one who has long waited for the moment when they can do something, anything, for their beloved. She would have waited upon John Morley, upon this whiteheaded, poverty-stricken, deserted husband, on bended knees, with deep abasement and trembling devotion. But all her duties would be to prepare his tea, and summon him to it, keeping herself unseen. She stole upstairs with a noise

less step, into his chamber, and arranged the bed again, which had been roughly and hastily done by the servant, making it as soft and full of comfort as tender hands could make it. Then she looked out the clothes he would need for the Sunday, lingering over her work with a frightened ecstasy. When the hour for tea came, she set the tray and his chair near the fire, in a room adjoining his sitting-room, and put his slippers on the hearth. Would he need anything she had not placed upon the table, and ring for her, so giving her some chance of hearing his voice, and looking furtively into his face? Whether she dreaded or hoped for this most she could not tell, while she stood at the kitchen door, with her hands pressed against her heart, as she listened to his movements about the other room. But he did not ring; and, after a brief meal time she heard him go back to his own sitting-room. He remained there till seven o'clock, when he went out to attend some meeting at the chapel.

She was alone in her own house now, quite alone. She could venture into John Morley's desolate parlour which she had seen so often from without. How well she remembered the

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old days passed in it! Here was the carpet she had chosen herself, faded and threadbare, with one long, narrow, bare strip, which his feet had worn in his restless pacings to and fro, The scarlet baize she had nailed with brass nails along the edge of the bookshelves, in order to brighten up the dingy rows of books, was a deep dull red now, and the nails no longer glistened in the fire-light. She began to wonder how the room overhead would look ; her room, which she had locked up herself, and the key of which was still safe in her keeping. She knew herself to be absolutely alone, with no fear of interruption for another hour to come. Lingering for a few minutes in a tremor of nervous hesitation, she could not succeed in shaking off the feverish desire to see it once again, during this absence of Hester, which made it possible to do so. She flew back to her refuge, and sought for the key at the bottom of the box which held her scanty possessions. It had accompanied her in all her wanderings,this key which she had turned upon the paradise she despised, and could never more reShe hastened with it-for her time was not long-up the staircase again, which she had

enter.

so often trodden with a light step and lighter heart; past Hester's little room, so severe, so simple, so bare of all the common luxuries of girlhood; past her husband's chamber. Beyond stood the door which no hand had opened since she herself had closed it. The key was not rusty, but the lock was, and it grated harshly, and the hinges creaked as she pushed open the door. Then she stood inside.

Just as she had left it! She had remembered to bring a candle with her, though it was still daylight in the other rooms, and its faint light was insufficient to make manifest all the ravages of time. There were the books she had been reading, after her fitful fashion, still scattered on the table, with a man's glove lying among them; she recollected it in an instant, it was one of Robert Waldron's. There was her fanciful little couch of blue damask drawn up to the fireside, and the chair beside it where he had been sitting, and Hester's low hassock between her seat and his. The piano was still open, and a yellow page of music, no doubt some song she had been singing to him, was resting upon the stand. A grey dust and tarnish had fallen upon all, but she scarcely saw it. It