I left Belfield early the next morning, and pursued my way to The Headlands. I had many thoughts of Jack as I went on, wondering if this cruel and irremediable wrong which Fate had inflicted was to shadow all his life. Indeed, I felt disheartened, for I had warm sympathies; and besides, the cruel prose of his experience broke upon the easy, pleasure-loving harmony of my life like the sudden crash of kettledrums in the midst of moribund flute melody. I had always possessed too much leisure not to have become saddened and perplexed at times with doubts before the eternal problem of life; and they all returned now, and not until I reached The Headlands in the late afternoon did I rouse myself into an anticipation of the pleasant life I was to meet. CHAPTER XV. I was not expected: no one met me at the station, and, finding no conveyance, I walked on myself to the place, and entered the grounds not more than an hour before sunset. Everything was curiously calm and at peace except the breakers, which moaned against the rocks below as the tide came in. The shadows were long upon the grass, and looked like things that had felt life all day, but now had coiled themselves up for sleep. Beyond the trees the fiery sun still shone, gilding the stately house with gold and resting lovingly upon the roses which clambered riotously over embrasures and abutments, lighting up the piazzas and columns with their bloom. I recognized a change at once in the aspect of the place: more windows and doors were open than formerly, and the porticoes showed signs of careless occupancy with their chairs and afghans, tables and a litter of books, papers and work. I stood before the door, gazing through the wide-columned vista of the hall, and the infinite seemed open before my eyes as I saw the blue and opal-tinted sea. But still there was no sound except the murmur from the shore, and nothing stirred except the sunbeams as they climbed the carved balustrade of the great staircase and gleamed on the frozen faces of a marble group in a niche. I did not ring at first, for it seemed as if my mother or Helen must come out--that they were close at hand, picking roses on the terrace or descending from their rooms. But it was Mills who presently issued from the dining-room and saw me. He greeted me as if I were one of the family, and ushered me into the library as he had done at the time of my first visit years before. Sitting there quietly, I seemed for the first time to realize the fact of old Mr. Raymond's death. I saw his chair by the fireplace, and the low seat on which Helen and I had sat together many and many a time. I had not grieved at the old man's death, but had felt that weeping for the dead might sometimes be a less dreary task than bearing with the living; yet here I could not see these beautiful inanimate things, once his intimate surroundings, without a thrill of regret that he was gone.