Rudolf indicated his willingness in silence.
"Then come with me to my library. The other witnesses are waiting there now. I have got them together as rapidly as I could, and they are all honest fellows."
As they were passing through the suite of rooms, Squire John suddenly stopped Rudolf, and said—
"Look! in this room I heard her laugh for the last time. On that chair yonder she lost her shawl—it is there still. On that table is a pair of gloves, the last she ever wore. Here she used to sit when she sketched. There's the piano, still open—a fantasia lies, you see, on the music-stand. If she should come back again, eh?"
And now he opened the door of a room illuminated by candles—Rudolf shrunk back.
"Old friend, that's not a fit place to enter. Surely you have lost yourself in your own house! That is your wife's bedroom."
"I know, but I can never pass it without going in. And now I mean to have a last look at it, for to-morrow I shall have it walled up. Look, everything remains just as she left it. She did not die in this room—don't be alarmed! That door yonder leads to the garden. Look, everything is in its old place—there the lamp by which she used to read, on the table a half-written letter, which nobody has read. A hundred times have I entered the room, and not a word of that letter have I read. To me it is holy. In front of the
bed are her two little embroidered slippers, so tiny that they look as if they had been made for a child. On the table is an open prayer-book, between the open leaves of which are an iris and an amaranth and a maple leaf. She greatly loved those flowers."
"Let us go away from hence, let us go away," urged Rudolf. "It pains me to hear you talk so."
"It pains you, eh?—it does me good. I have sat here for days together, and have called to mind every word she said. I see her before me everywhere, asleep, awake, smiling, sorrowful—I see her resting her pretty head on the pillows, I see her sleeping, I see her dying——"