"I must be going," she said; "I have far to go yet, and it is growing so late."
Before the astonished woman could remonstrate, she was out of the house, going slowly on her way. She was so weak she could not walk very fast. Her impetuous will alone sustained her dragging footsteps. Thick twilight had fallen before she entered the busy, bustling city. Sorely frightened at finding herself alone in the gathering darkness, yet afraid that the glare of the gaslights would reveal her shrinking form to her pursuers, she shrank along in the friendly shadows, drawing back nervously from the hurrying forms that brushed past her, and trembling at every footstep behind her. But in spite of her nervousness she at length entered the elegant street where her father resided.
All was gaiety and life in the brilliant houses as she hurried past them. The light from the drawing-rooms streamed out upon her shrinking form.
Wild and entrancing strains of music filled the night air. Long lines of carriages were drawn up in front of some of the houses whose owners were holding balls and receptions. She knew them all; they were all friends of hers: but she flitted past them like a spirit, pausing not in her frightened yet happy course until she stood before the windows of her father's handsome mansion.
These windows were lighted, too, but not so brightly as some; music, too, stole through them, but it was soft and subdued. Death had been there so recently they had not the heart to be gay, she thought.
Wild with her joy she threw off her disguising hat and veil and running up the broad, marble steps rang the bell. It was opened by the stately old servitor whom she had been accustomed to from childhood. But instead of welcoming her home, the gray-haired old man fled wildly down the hall after one glance into her lovely white face.
"He takes me for a ghost," she thought, laughing and running after him down the wide hall till she reached the drawing-room door which stood open for coolness that sultry night.
She stopped in the doorway, framed like a picture in the hall gaslights, and looked into the room.
They were all there before her—her dear ones! The piano stood in the center of the room, its back towards her, with Mrs. Vance on the music-stool, directly facing her. Her white hands strayed over the pearl keys, and Lancelot Darling stood beside her, and turned the leaves of her music.