* * * * * Her firm writing, more like a man's than a woman's looked a little shaky at the end--Was she crying perhaps when she wrote the letter--the poor little girl--What will the death mean to her eventually? Will the necessity to work be lessened? But even the gravity of the news did not prevent a feeling of joy and relief in me--I would see her again--Only four days to wait! But what a strange note!--not any exhibition of feeling! she would not share even that natural emotion of grief with me. Her work is business, and a well bred person ought not to mix anything personal into it.--How will she be--? Colder than ever? or will it have softened her--. She will probably be more unbending to Burton than to me. The weather has changed suddenly, the wind is sighing, and I know that the summer is over--I shall have the sitting-room fire lighted and everything as comfortable as I can when she does turn up, and I shall have to stay here until then since I cannot communicate with her in any way. This ridiculous obscurity as to her address must be cleared away. I must try to ask her casually, so as not to offend her. * * * * * A week has passed--. Alathea came on Thursday--I was sickeningly nervous on Thursday morning. I resented it extremely. As yet the only advance I have made is that I can control most of the outward demonstrations of my perturbations, but not the sensations themselves. I was sitting in my chair quite still when the door opened, and in she came--Just the scrap of a creature in dead black. Although there was no crepe, one could see that the garments were French trappings of woe, that is, she had a veil hanging from her simple small hat. I felt that she had had to buy these things for the funeral, and probably could not afford a second set of more dowdy ones for her working clothes, so that there was that indescribable air of elegance about her appearance which had shown in the _Bois_ that Sunday. The black was supremely becoming to her transparent white skin, and seemed to set off the bright bronze brown of her hair--the rebellious little curls had slipped out beside her ears, but the yellow horn spectacles were as uncompromising as ever--I could not see whether her eyes were sad or no--her mouth was firm as usual. "I want to tell you of my sympathy," I said immediately--"I was so sorry not to know your address that I might have expressed it to you before--I would have wished to send you some flowers." "Thank you," was all she answered--but her voice trembled a little. "It was so stupid of me not to have asked you for your address before--you must have thought it was so careless and unsympathetic." "Oh! no"--. "Won't you give it to me now that I may know in the future?" "We are going to move--It would be useless--it is not decided where we go yet." I knew I dared not insist.