bear the new life alone. This genial party--what had he to do with it, disturbing it by his past, by the ghosts that would come with him? He shut the door noiselessly, and went back again, down to his gloomy library. Poor Annie’s room, in which everything spoke of her--how the loss of her had changed all the world to him, and driven him away for ever from the soft delight of that household centre! Strangely enough, the failure of the refuge which friendship had made for him, renewed all his regrets tenfold for his wife whom he had lost. He seemed almost to lose her again, and the bitterness of the first hours came back upon him as he sat alone, having nowhere to go to. Life was hard on him, and fate. The party in the drawing-room had not perceived this ghost looking in upon them: they went on tranquilly; Miss Cherry puckering her soft old forehead over her art design, and the firelight throwing its warm ruddiness over Cara’s white dress. Barring the troubles incident upon art-needlework, the two ladies were giving their whole minds to the lily maid of Astolat and her love-tragedy. But the reader was not so much absorbed in ‘Elaine.’ Another current of thought kept flowing through his mind underneath the poetry. He wondered whether this would be his lot through his life, to sit in the light of the warmth which was for his brother, and be the tame spectator of the love which was his brother’s, and make up for the absence of the gay truant who even for that love’s sake would not give up his own pleasures. Edward felt that there would be a certain happiness touched with bitterness even in his lot; but how strange that this, which he would have given his life for, should fall to Oswald’s share, who would give so little for it, and not to him! These thoughts ran through his mind like a cold undercurrent below the warm sunlit surface of the visible stream; but they did not show, and indeed they did not much disturb Edward’s happiness of the moment, but gave it a kind of poignant thrill of feeling, which made it more dear. He knew (he thought) that Oswald was the favoured and chosen, but as yet he had not been told of it, and the uncertainty was still sweet, so long as it might last.