While these thoughts were passing through Elizabeth’s mind, darkness had fallen. Lights were twinkling everywhere. The great house opposite radiated brightness from many windows, and it occurred to Elizabeth, as to every sorrowful and disappointed person, that every one in that luxurious and brilliant home must be happy. Probably the girl of the boudoir, whose attitude had expressed such dejection, was grieving over some trifle like a disappointment in a dance or the failure of some plan of pleasure. Then she heard the street door open and a step which she recognized as her father’s, and she had the first sensation of gladness she had felt for so long that she had almost forgotten what gladness was. General Brandon, standing under the flaring gas–jet in the narrow hall, saw the black figure flying down the stairs towards him. He stopped, trembling with emotion; he who had without a tremor faced death a hundred times was shaken at the sight of his child in her mourning garments. The next minute her head was on his shoulder and he was patting it, saying, “My child,—my ever dear child,—welcome at all times, more welcome in your sorrow.” Elizabeth looked up, smiling and weeping. It was the first time since her husband’s death that she had not seemed in everybody’s way. General Brandon gazed at her, at the changes that ten years had made, at the marks of the recent shipwreck of her hopes and joys, at the pallor and thinness that brooding over her misfortunes had brought upon her; and then he said, with a tremulous smile and with tears in his honest eyes, “It is doubly sweet to have you back unchanged.” He led her into the dingy, well–remembered drawing–room, and they sat hand in hand on the sofa, talking, Elizabeth dwelling upon her husband’s goodness to her, and mentioning none of her woes and perplexities in that first hour of meeting. Then Serena announced dinner, and General Brandon, with the air of escorting a queen regent, placed his daughter at the head of the table. “And never, since the day of your marriage, my love, have I ever sat down to this table without remembering you and wishing that you were seated at this place,” he said. To Elizabeth it seemed that the place she had in that dull dining room was the only spot she had had any right to, except under sufferance, since that June morning, now nearly a year and a half past, when her husband had died. Not only was General Brandon glad to see her, but Serena seemed equally so. Serena was a distinct acquisition to Elizabeth. When the dinner was fairly begun the General produced a bottle of that doubtful champagne which had been served at Elizabeth’s wedding. “Saved to celebrate your return, my dearest,” he said. Elizabeth could scarcely drink it for the tears that threatened to overflow.