But why--why were the windows of the grey farm-house closed and shuttered too? What could be the meaning of that? Celia could hardly believe her eyes. Never once had she seen them closed. And the door was closed, and the garden empty, and the clothes-line gone, the oleander gone. She remained for a time without getting out of the carriage, staring in puzzlement over at the house. It was like something in a dream. When she got out, she found that her knees were unsteady, and wondered at it, because she as yet felt little but a futile effort of the brain to find some common explanation of these circumstances, which only superficially, of course, seemed so unnatural. Why should not Julia for once in her life have gone on a visit, or a jaunt, or an errand? It was a long knowledge of all the conditions which made this surmise insufficient. Celia fumbled with a shutter and got it open. She made blinders with her hands and peered in. Then her heart sank away, as if one should suddenly find by the touch that a person one supposed alive was dead. It was a house from which the inmates plainly had moved away. She made the circuit of the house, examining things. All told the same story, no possibility of deceiving oneself. They had gone. Celia went to the gate and seated herself upon a stone facing the house, and stared at it. She felt no pain. Indeed, something said within her, in the tone she took discussing things sometimes, when she was drawing from a worldly philosophy: "Well, it simplifies matters." The solution first to present itself satisfied her. The same who had placed Larry there had come for him. Perhaps they had got wind of the proposed adoption,--Julia was deeper than had been suspected,--and in order that the darkness they evidently sought should be ensured past all doubt, they had prevailed upon the foster-parent to leave, like the Arabs. No house was so near that she might to any purpose have made inquiry, if she had cared to do that. But, as has been said, she was satisfied. What had happened seemed to her obvious and what, had she been a little wiser, she would have been prepared for. As she rose, she laughed, or did something more or less like it, and said aloud for the crows to hear: "What a fool I was to suppose that anything I cared so much about could go right!" She got into her phaeton and drove back. She said to them at home, and the hard sadness setting her features was in its effect vindictive, "You see, you are to have your wish, after all." To make investigation did not even later enter her mind. She would not grant to her persecuting fate the joy of beholding her tortured with suspenses or uncertainties. She was persuaded of the worst. Her heart told her it was finished with that dream.