It was pitch dark when they arrived at their destination. They turned and went through a gate, then passed through the trees, which made the night yet darker. By and by the faint lights of the house appeared, with blotchy pallours thinning the mist and darkness. Presently the carriage stopped.

Both the children continued sound asleep and were carried off to bed. The father and mother knew the house from times past and revived for each other old memories. But to Hester all was strange. With the long journey, the weariness, the sadness, and the strangeness, she entered the old hall as if walking in a dream. It had a quiet, dull, dignified look, as if it expected nobody, as if it was here itself because it could not help it and would rather not be here, as if it had seen so many generations come and go that it had ceased to care much about new faces. Everything in the house looked somber and solemn, as if it had not forgotten its old mistress.

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!