They had supper in a long, low room, with furniture almost black, against whose window heavy roses every now and then softly patted, caught in the fringes of the rain gusts. The dusky room, the perfect stillness inside, the low mingled sounds of swaying trees and pattering rain outside, the sense of the great darkness—all grew together into one possessing mood, which rose and sank, like the water in a sea-cave, in the mind of Hester. But who by words can fix the mood that comes and goes unbidden? A single happy phrase, the sound of a wind, the odour of the mere earth may send us into some lonely, dusky realm of being. I doubt if even the poet ever conveys just what he means to the mind of his fellow. Sisters, brothers, we can meet only in God.

But the nearest mediator of feeling, the most potent, the most delicate, and perhaps the likest to the breath moving upon the soft face of the waters of chaos, is music. It rose like a soft, irrepressible tide in the heart of Hester. It mingled and became one with her mood. Together they beat at the gates of silence. She rose and looked around her for such an instrument as had always been within her reach—walked about the shadowy room searching. But there was no creature among the aged furniture. She returned and sat again at the table, the mood vanishing in weariness.

But they did not linger there long. Fatigue made the ladies glad to be shown to the rooms prepared for them. The housekeeper, the ancient authority of the place, in every motion and tone expressing herself wronged by their intrusion, conducted them. Every spot they passed was plainly far more hers than theirs, only the law was a tyrant, and she dared not assert her rights!

Tired as she was, Hester was charmed with her room, and the more charmed the more she looked about. It was old fashioned to her heart’s content, and seemed full of shadowy histories, as if each succeeding occupant had left behind an ethereal record, a memorial imprint of presence of walls and furniture—to which she would now add hers. In weary haste she undressed, ascending with some difficulty the high four-post bed which stood waiting for her like an altar of sleep.

She awoke to a blaze of sunlight. The night had passed and carried the tears of the day with it. Ah, how much is done in the night when we sleep and know nothing! Things never stop. The sun was shining as if he too had wept and repented. All the earth beneath him was like the face of a child who has ceased to weep and begun to smile, but has not yet wiped away his tears.

Raindrops everywhere! millions upon millions of them! every one of them with a sun in it! Hester had sprung from her bed and opened the curtains. How different was the sight from what she saw when she looked out in Addison Square. If heaven be as different from this earth, and as much better than it, we shall indeed be happy children. On each side she saw green, undulating lawn, with trees and meadows beyond. Just in front, the grassy lawn sloped rapidly, grew steep, and fell into the swift river—which, now swollen from the rains, went rolling and sliding, brown and heavy toward the far-off sea. Beyond the river, the bank rose into a wooded hill. She could see walks winding through the wood, here appearing, there vanishing, and a little way up the valley, the rails of a rustic bridge that led them to it.