The day appointed for Markham to pay his farewell visit to his good friends, Mr. Martindale and family, being arrived, the young gentleman went with not quite so heavy a heart as he had expected. He felt himself perfectly composed, and began to fancy that his attachment to Clara was not so decided and powerful as to render it at all necessary to use any peculiar caution in his tones or language of leave-taking. He even smiled at the idea, that though it was the gloomy month of November, proverbial for its power of depressing the spirits, he was yet in a tolerably cheerful and composed state of mind. Mr. Martindale had removed from the hotel in which he resided for the first week of his stay in town, and had established his daughter and family in a ready-furnished house. Markham was not beyond the time appointed for his visit, but rather before it. He was shown into the drawing-room, which at his entrance was empty. He was glad of that; for it gave him time to prepare himself, to study looks and speeches. There is more ostensible than real advantage in a circumstance of this nature. Empty rooms, especially such as are usually occupied by very interesting persons, always make one shiver, let the weather in summer be ever so warm, or the fires in winter ever so good. The most confident and self-satisfied derive no benefit from such opportunity of preparation. So Markham presently found, though we do not say that he was a very confident man. He experienced after the first minute or two an indefinable sensation, as though the very air of the room was not in the best and fittest state for respiration. He had no power to sit still, and but little to walk about the apartment. The house, being a ready-furnished house, was not replete with much that was ornamental. There were some few pictures, but of such very inferior value, that no one who had any thing else to do or think of would trouble himself to rise from his seat to look at them. There was a table in the middle of the room, on which lay in disorder some books, which looked as if they were made on purpose to be scattered on drawing-room tables. There was also a portfolio of drawings partly open, or so carelessly closed, that its contents were visible and ascertainable without being moved. Markham looked at the drawings as they lay; then he ventured to draw them out one after another: they were the same that he had seen before repeatedly, and he thought that he should see them no more. Then his spirits began to sink and his cheerfulness abated, and he felt very November-like. Arranging the drawings as nearly as possible in the same disorder as he had found them, he perceived under the portfolio an open atlas. The map of that country which was destined to be his residence for some few years to come lay open before him. He was looking at it with the pleasing thought that some of his friends had been thinking of him, when the drawing-room door opened, and Clara entered alone.