When its wheels died away in the distance, Sara sat down to meditate. Robert, then, who had spoken in parables, was planning something which would place him in peril. Perhaps she would look on him no more. She tried to realise what that would mean for her. During the months when he was in England she was glad not to see him, looking forward to a happier day when he would be all hers, as side by side and hand in hand they would stroll down the hill's shadowed side to the churchyard at its base. She had often wondered which of them would first be summoned hence--picturing a cosy hearth with two aged figures in the chimney-corner, who, their career over, were awaiting a release. On such occasions she had always decided that they would be so old--so old--that a day or two only could possibly intervene between their flitting. After clinging so closely one to the other, in joy and sorrow, through a prolonged probation, but a brief space could keep the pair asunder ere they were joined again for all eternity. So had the simple damsel dreamed, and had been happy in her castle-building, withdrawing her mind to the love-labour of that delicious task, from the tragic scenes in which she wandered--in them, not of them--like one in a mesmeric trance. But now, in the oppressive stillness, she sat resolutely down to look upon herself as a possible actor in the tragedy; to look for her own image among the troop of women who importuned Heaven to call them hence. She tried to think of herself as she had seen the widows whilst gazing on their swinging husbands--as she had seen the mothers--stony, tearless, with their murdered sons across their knees. But it was not possible. There are situations so opposed to the order of things that we cannot realise them. Her mind's retina declined to accept the image--threw it back again as one contrary to nature; and yet it was all but certain that Robert--the sensitive, the ardent, the enthusiastic--had deliberately placed his foot upon the bridge of stars which conducts by a track of light to the Walhalla--which leads by the rugged path of torment and of martyrdom to the platform of immortality. She strove, with all the resolution she could muster, to conjure up the dreadful picture, but succeeded only in making her head spin round. Taking up a taper--nervous by reason of the silence of night and her lugubrious mental exercise--she thought she would pay a visit to her father, and look in at my lady's door to announce Doreen's abrupt departure, and prepare the invalid for the noisy coming of Shane and of his guests.