“You will not be surprised at my coming alone, or at John’s not having told you I was coming,” said Harriet; “and you will believe that, when I tell you why I have come. May I do so now?”
“You can do nothing better.”
“You were not busy?”
He pointed to the violoncello lying on the sofa, and said “I have been, all day. Here’s my witness. I have been confiding all my cares to it. I wish I had none but my own to tell.”
“Is the House at an end?” said Harriet, earnestly.
“Completely at an end.”
“Will it never be resumed?”
“Never.”
The bright expression of her face was not overshadowed as her lips silently repeated the word. He seemed to observe this with some little involuntary surprise: and said again:
“Never. You remember what I told you. It has been, all along, impossible to convince him; impossible to reason with him; sometimes, impossible even to approach him. The worst has happened; and the House has fallen, never to be built up any more.”