Snow-trees, snow-bushes, sparkle up against the dusk quiet of the sky. No movement anywhere! absolute stillness! perfect silence! It is broken now, this silence, by the church-clock with slow wakefulness chiming twelve. Those slow strokes set me a thinking. I hear no longer the loud and lively voices next door, the icy penetration of the air is unfelt by me, as I lean, with my elbow on the sill, looking out at the cold grace of the night. My mind strays gently away over all my past life--over the last important year. I think of my wedding, of my little live wreath of sweet Nancies, of our long, dusty journey, of Dresden. With an honest, stinging heart-pang, I think of my ill-concealed and selfish weariness in our twilight walks and scented drives, of the look of hurt kindness on his face, at his inability to please me. I think of our return, of the day when he told me of the necessity for his voyage to Antigua, and of my own egotistic unwillingness to accompany him. I think of our parting, when I shed such plenteous tears--tears that seem to me now to have been so much more tears of remorse, of sorrow that I was not sorrier, than of real grief. In every scene I seem to myself to have borne a most shabby part. My meditations are broken in upon by a quick step approaching me, by a voice in my ear--Algy's. "You are _here_, are you? I have been looking for you everywhere! Why, the window is _open_! For Heaven's sake let me get you a cloak! you know how delicate your chest is. For _my_ sake, _do_!" It is too dark to see his face, but there is a quick, excited tenderness in his voice. "_My_ chest delicate!" cry I, in an accent of complete astonishment. "Well, it is news to me if it is! My dear boy, what has put such an idea into your head? and if I got a cloak, I should think it would be for my _own_ sake, not yours!" He has been leaning over me in the dusk. At my words he starts violently and draws back. "It is _you_, is it?" he says, in an altered voice of constraint, whence all the mellow tenderness has fled. "To be sure!" reply I, matter-of-factly. "For whom did you take me?" But though I ask, alas! I know. CHAPTER XXX.