The departure for the country was to take place at an early hour.  We all breakfasted together; the meal was hurried over comfortlessly and silently.  My father was either writing notes, or examining the steward’s accounts, almost the whole time; and Clara was evidently incapable of uttering a single word, without risking the loss of her self-possession.  The silence was so complete, while we sat together at the table, that the fall of the rain outside (which had grown softer and thicker as the morning advanced), and the quick, quiet tread of the servants, as they moved about the room, were audible with a painful distinctness.  The oppression of our last family breakfast in London, for that year, had an influence of wretchedness which I cannot describe—­which I can never forget.

At last the hour of starting came.  Clara seemed afraid to trust herself even to look at me now.  She hurriedly drew down her veil the moment the carriage was announced.  My father shook hands with me rather coldly.  I had hoped he would have said something at parting; but he only bade me farewell in the simplest and shortest manner.  I had rather he would have spoken to me in anger than restrained himself as he did, to what the commonest forms of courtesy required.  There was but one more slight, after this, that he could cast on me; and he did not spare it.  While my sister was taking leave of me, he waited at the door of the room to lead her down stairs, as if he knew by intuition that this was the last little parting attention which I had hoped to show her myself.

Clara whispered (in such low, trembling tones that I could hardly hear her): 

“Think of what you promised in your study, Basil, whenever you think of me: I will write often.”

As she raised her veil for a moment, and kissed me, I felt on my own cheek the tears that were falling fast over hers.  I followed her and my father down stairs.  When they reached the street, she gave me her hand—­it was cold and powerless.  I knew that the fortitude she had promised to show, was giving way, in spite of all her efforts to preserve it; so I let her hurry into the carriage without detaining her by any last words.  The next instant she and my father were driven rapidly from the door.

When I re-entered the house, my watch showed me that I had still an hour to wait, before it was time to go to North Villa.

Between the different emotions produced by my impressions of the scene I had just passed through, and my anticipations of the scene that was yet to come, I suffered in that one hour as much mental conflict as most men suffer in a life.  It seemed as if I were living out all my feelings in this short interval of delay, and must die at heart when it was over.  My restlessness was a torture to me; and yet I could not overcome it.  I wandered through the house from room to room, stopping nowhere.  I took down book after book from the library, opened them to read, and put them back on the shelves the next instant.  Over and over again I walked to the window to occupy myself with what was passing in the street; and each time I could not stay there for one minute together.  I went into the picture-gallery, looked along the walls, and yet knew not what I was looking at.  At last I wandered into my father’s study—­the only room I had not yet visited.