It took some time and patience to quiet the house, and persuade Mary and Eulalie to retire. When all was done, and Agatha passed swiftly, lamp in hand, through the dark, solitary rooms, she felt frightened. The house seemed so silent--already so full of death. There was one thing more to be done--to write a line ready for Anne Valery's waking, otherwise she would expect her home, as she had promised, in the early morning. How would she tell all these horrors, even in the gentlest way, to the feeble Anne, for whom, however unknown to others, and disguised by the invalid herself, Agatha felt an ever-present dread that she in vain tried to believe was only born of strong attachment. We never deeply love anything for which we do not likewise continually fear. Agatha almost recoiled from the idea of mentioning danger or death to Anne Valery. She went into the dining-room to write. Everything there appeared just as when this great shock struck the household into confusion; the dessert was not removed--the wine in which he had drunk Nathanael's health, remained yet in Mr. Harper's glass. Agatha shrank back. She half expected to see some shadowy form--not himself but Death, rise and sit in the arm-chair whence the old man had fallen. Brave she was, but she was still a girl, and a girl of strong imagination. Her heart beat audibly; she put the lamp down in the middle of the room, where it might cast more light, and render less ghastly the last flicker of one wax-candle, the fellows of which had been left to burn out in their sockets. Then she sat down, covered her eyes, and tried to think connectedly of all that had happened this night. Something touched her. She leaped up--would have screamed, but that she remembered the room overhead--the room. She crouched down--again covering her eyes. Another touch, and a stirring in the window-curtain near which she sat. There was something--every one knows that horrible sensation--_something_ else in the room besides herself. “Who is it?” she said, still not looking up, frightened at her own voice. “It's me, ma'am--only me.” Everybody in the house had forgotten Mr. Grimes. Half-intoxicated at the time of Mr. Harper's seizure, he had stayed behind in the dining-room, drunk himself stupid, and slept himself sober--or partly so. They say drink is a great unfolder of truth; if so, the old lawyer's sharp face betrayed that, in spite of all his past civility, he had not the kindest feeling in the world towards the Harper family. “So, young lady, I frightened you? You did not expect to find me here.” “I did not, indeed; I had quite forgotten your very existence,” said Mrs. Harper, point-blank. She had conceived a great dislike to Mr. Grimes, and Agatha was a girl who never took much trouble to disguise her aversions.