At least there will be some one to occupy two more of these numberless chairs; two more for the stolid family portraits to eye; two voices, nay _three_, for _I_ shall speak then, to drown the sounding silence. It is time they should be here. The carriage went to the station more than an hour ago. I sit down in a window-seat that commands the park, and look along the drive by which the general went this morning. Dear Roger! I will practise calling him "Roger" when I am by myself, and then perhaps I may be able to address him by it when he comes home. I will say, "How are you, Roger?" I have fallen into a pleasant reverie, with my head leaned against the curtain, in which I see myself giving glib utterance to this formula, as I stand in a blue gown--Roger likes me in blue--and a blue cap--I look older in a cap--while he precipitates himself madly-- My reverie breaks off. Some one has entered, and is standing by me. It is a footman, with a telegram on a salver. Albeit I know the trivial causes for which people employ the telegraph-wires nowadays, I never can get over my primal deadly fear of those yellow envelopes, that seem emblems and messengers of battle, murder, and sudden death. As I tear it open, a hundred horrible impossible possibilities flash across my brain. Algy and Barbara have both been killed in a railway-accident, and have telegraphed to tell me so; the same fate has happened to Roger, and he has adopted the same course. "_Algernon Grey to Lady Tempest._ "Cannot come: not allowed. _He_ has turned nasty." The paper drops into my lap, as I draw a long breath of mingled relief and disappointment. A whole long evening--long night of this solitude before me! perhaps much more, for they do not even say that they will come to-morrow! I _must_ utter my disappointment to somebody, even if it is only the footman. "They are not coming!" say I, plaintively; then, recollecting and explaining myself, "I mean, they need not send in dinner! I will not have any!" I _cannot_ stand another repast--three times longer than the last too--for one _can_ abridge luncheon, seated in lorn dignity between the staring dead on the walls, and the obsequious living.