Softly, and without noise, he entered his dark and silent house. A moment, and he had lit his shaded lamp, and conscious of the sleepless vigil in his mind, he opened the volume which held for him the rich lore of Verulam, his unfailing pleasure, and the comfort of his saddest hours, and sat down to read the night away. Within all was still. Without, the wind swept drearily through the wan and shadowy street around the silent dwelling, the lilac odors had died, and the pale moonlight shone with the blue glimmer of swords. CHAPTER XVI. THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON. The gibbous moon hung midway down the zenith over the vast and sleeping city, a lob of spectral light in the cold, blue heavens, over a fantastic brood of dreams. Daniel Webster’s liegemen and victims slept, and Black Dan himself, liegeman and victim to a darker power than he, slept also; but the liegemen and victims of Dan Cupid had a more uncertain chance of slumber, and four among them at least had wakeful eyes that night as the moon was going down. As the moon was going down, its pale gleam fell upon the pallid face and disordered form of Wentworth. He had risen from his bed, and was sitting, half dressed, at his open chamber window, in an upper story of his father’s house on Tremont street, and brooding mournfully on the misshapen planet, which hung like a huge, bulging drop of watery lustre above the roofs beyond the Common trees. His bed, all tossed and tumbled, glimmered in white confusion behind him, and faint rays of moonlight touched the lines of the gilt frames upon the walls, the books upon their shelves, the ghostly busts and statuettes around the chamber, and the dark, goblin shapes of the disarranged furniture. Within the chamber all was dusk disorder, and a dusk disorder was within the clouded mind and aching heart of its tenant. Passion had spent its fury; the frenzy and the fever of his heart were allayed; and something like the wan tranquillity of the night had succeeded. It was all over; the play was played; she had lured him on to love her; she had trampled on his love; he had repaid her with one bitter burst of scorn; he had struck her heartless pride with insult into tears; it was done; he would never see her more. It was done, but was it well done? The calm, rebuking image of Harrington rose in his mind. Him, too, she was deceiving, or seeking to deceive—but he—would he have answered her so? Oh, idiot that I am, he thought; he would have shamed her even in her triumph by his silence, his compassion, his forgiveness, and made her feel how poor a thing she was; while I have shown her that my wound burns and rankles that she may exult over it, and given her the advantage by an insult which will only bring her sympathy and me shame!