“I was going to say that our acquaintance was very brief, but what I have seen or heard, I will not tell to you or to any one.  Your imagination is magnifying your sufferings.  You want a heart to confide in.  You have brothers-in-law, wise and strong men.

“That, for the whole of them,” she said, as she snapped her fingers.  “Their wives are my sisters, some of them old enough to be my mother, but they and their husbands are alike—­sordid.  The hope of money is even more debasing than the hoarding.  Do you understand me?  I must speak or my heart will burst.  Are you a wizzard that you have so drawn me on?  Dare I speak?  Is it maidenly that I should?  There is a spell upon me.  Go to your chamber—­there is a spy upon me; I am seen, and I fear I have been overheard; go to your chamber—­here, take this book and read it if you never have—­dinner is at hand, and after dinner—­, but let each hour provide for itself,—­at dinner,—­well, well, adieu.”

She was in the drawing-room, and again the soft melody of half-suppressed music, scarcely audible, yet every note distinct, floated to his chamber, and the guest scarcely breathed that he might hear.  There was something so plaintive, so melting in the tones that they saddened as well as delighted.  How the heart can melt out at the finger-points when touching the keys of a sweetly-toned instrument!  It is thrown to the air, and in its plaint makes sweet music of its melancholy.  Like harmonious spirits chanting in their invisibility, making vocal the very atmosphere, it died away as though going to a great distance, and stillness was in the whole house.  He stole gently to the door.  There seated was Alice; her elbow on her instrument, and her brow upon her hand.  The bell rang for dinner.  The repast is over, and a glass of generous wine sent the rose to the cheeks of Alice, but enlivened not her eye.  Her heart was sad:  the eye spoke it but too plainly, and she looked beautiful beyond comparison.  The eye of the stranger was rivetted upon that drooping lid and more than melancholy brow.

His situation was a painful one.  More than once had he caught the quick, suspicious glance of the judge flash upon him.  He was becoming an object of interest to more than one in the house; but how different that interest!  How at antipodes the motives of that interest!  He knew too much, and yet he wanted to know more.  He was left alone in the drawing-room with the timid, modest little cousin.  It rained on, and the weather seemed melancholy, and their feelings were in unison with the weather.

“I shall leave, I believe, miss, as soon as the rain will permit.  I presume I may go down to the city without fear.”

“You will find it but a sorry place, sir.  All the hotels are closed and everybody is out of town save the physicians, and the poor who are unable to get away.  The gloom of the desolated place is enough to craze any one.  I hope you do not find your stay disagreeable in this house?”