by desiring him to go and stand still at the
sideboard.

The dining-hall, like all the suite of
rooms on the west side of the house, had a
door communicating with the loggia outside.
Veronica bade Barletti finish his
wine at his leisure, and rose from her chair
saying that she would go and walk in the
loggia until Sir John should be ready to
receive them.

A request to be permitted to accompany
her was on Barletti's lips, but she checked
him by a look, and went out alone, pacing
slowly and regularly up and down under
the stone arcades. The night was dark,
and since sunset the air had grown cool.
Veronica lifted the gauze upper tunic of her
dress, and wrapped her shoulders and arms
in it. As she walked solitarily, a feeling of
intense loneliness came upon her, such as
she had never experienced in her life.

Outside in the darkness she looked in at
the lighted hall each time she passed the
glass door. She saw the brightness of the
table, glittering with glass and silver, and
adorned with flowers. She saw Barletti
seated there. His face was towards the
window. The light fell on his bald forehead
and dark eyes, and mellowed the tint
of his pale skin. He looked like a portrait
by Vandyke. She regarded all this with
an inexpressible sensation of strangeness. It
seemed to her that she was looking on the
room, and on the man, for the first time. It
seemed to her that she had no part in anything
within those walls. No one could see
her out there in the darkness. And to look
on even the most familiar face, being oneself
unseen, gives it an unfamiliar aspect.

The fact of being shut out there alone in
the darkness and of looking in upon the
lighted rooms produced in her a sense of
complete isolation: isolation of spirit as
well as of body. What did her existence
matter to any one? If she could at that
moment transport herself to Shipley-in-the
Wold, and peep in at the vicarage windows,
she would see no void that her absence
had made. It would all be going on much
as usual. Her father would be reading by
the fire—they must have fires now in the
evening—and Maud would be reading too,
or perhaps playing softly on the old piano.
Or, it might be that Mr. Plew was there,
prosing on in his mild, monotonous voice.
And outside, the wide flats would be looming
dreary and vague; and near Sack's farm
the sheep and the white cattle would
glimmer dotted about the pastures fast
asleep. She could fancy it all! So, thought
she, a ghost must feel revisiting unperceived
the haunts of the body.

The idea of death thus conjured up, made
her shiver, and nervously walk faster. How
lonely she felt! How lonely, how lonely!

Veronica had never in her life comprehended
what was meant by a "pleasing
melancholy." Sadness of any kind was
utterly distasteful to her; and aroused
either a species of impatient resentment,
or a headlong abandonment of herself to
despair, which had some anger in it too.

All at once the windows of the salottino
threw out rays of brightness into the night.
Sir John must be there. The rays came
through the interstices of the wooden
Venetian blinds. She could not look into
the salottino as she could into the dining-
hall, where the shutters were left open.
She felt a sudden yearning for light, and
shelter, and companionship. It was too
intolerable being out there alone with her
own thoughts in the darkness.

She went into the house through the
dining-room where Barletti was still sitting
at the table. He had drunk scarcely any
wine since Veronica left him; but to kill
the time he had eaten nearly the whole
contents of a large glass dish of sweetmeats,
and was beginning to find that occupation
pall on him when she reappeared.

Ansano stood sentinel in the background.
He had not found the half hour a pleasant
one, either. If he might have been permitted
to distinguish himself by handing
to the signor principe every dish on the
table in regular sequence, he would have
been content. For Ansano, like the rest
of the servants, was little more than a mere
rustic, and the delighted pride he felt in
such professional promotion as was implied
in being trusted to do any service
unwatched by Paul, wore still the gloss of
novelty. But to stand there, at the sideboard,
still and silent, while the other
servants were supping socially together,
was a severe trial.

Veronica walked at once through the
dining-hall to the salottino, and Barletti
followed her. Sir John was lying on a sofa.
A lamp stood on a small table near his head,
but it was so shaded as to throw no light
on his face, although it illuminated the gay
flowered dressing-gown he wore, and his
white wrinkled hands.

"Here is Prince Cesare de' Barletti,"
said Veronica, seating herself on a low
chair near the sofa. "He wanted to go
away when he heard that you were not
well. But I made him stay."