The long, bright hours stole on, but no one in Mossgray saw the broken lily. An unexpressed understanding of some calamity fell upon the household; the blinds were drawn down in the family rooms--the voices were hushed even in the kitchen, and when any went up or down stairs, they went in silence, as if death, and the reverence that belongs to death, were in the house. But the door of Lilias’ room was not opened, and though the old man himself lingered near it ready to catch any sound, he would permit no intrusion on her; for now there could be no hope that Halbert was wrong, and the grief of his youthful days came back to the heart of Adam Graeme, as he thought of those young hopes setting, like the sun, in the dark sea of death. It was twilight, and he had returned to his study--soft, downy masses of clouds just touched with the lingering colours of the sunset were piled up like mountains of some dreamy fairyland on that wonderful placid sea of heaven, and long strips of coast and floating tinted islands stretched along the whole breadth of the sky. He sat, sadly, looking at them, and thinking of the holy, calm land beyond, where the sun of hope and promise sets never more, when his watchful ear caught the sound of a slow step ascending the stair. He looked towards the door with painful interest. It was Lilias. She had laid aside the light summer dress which she had worn in the morning, and the old man started as he looked upon the shadowy, drooping figure in its heavy, black garments, and the perfectly pale face on which no shade of colour remained. He rose to meet her; but Lilias seemed comparatively calm. “I have brought it to you, Mossgray.” She spoke very slowly as if deliberate pain were necessary to produce each single word. She had brought _it_--the messenger of death. And laying it on the table before him, Lilias sat down on Charlie’s chair, and leaning her heavy head upon her hand, lifted her eyes to the old man’s face as he read the letter. Such a letter he had once received--but this was written by a friend of the dead, and written with tears as it had been read, though the tears were very different. The writer said his dear friend Grant, travelling for his health to some place among the mountains where health was to be found, had joined a British Company, a few officers and a small band of men, on the way; that one of the revolted Affghan tribes had encountered them, and after a desperate and unavailing struggle, the small, brave force had been utterly cut to pieces, and it was impossible even to recover the bodies of the slain. Mossgray shuddered as he came to this conclusion of the kind, well-meaning letter, and felt what torture it must have inflicted; yet it was gently done, and in few words, as is the kindest, when such tidings are to be told. She was looking at him; with the deep, blue, wakeful eyes which cast wan light like the moon over her colourless face, she was reading his countenance.