But Richard saved me, and sent her away angry. I crept back to the bed, and lay down on it again. I heard the others whispering as they passed through the hall. Mary Leighton was crying; Charlotte was silent. I don't think I heard her voice at all. After a long while I heard them go down, and go into the dining-room. They spoke in very subdued tones, and there was only the slightest movement of china and silver, to indicate that a meal was going on. But this seemed to give me a more frantic sense of change than anything else. I flung myself across the bed, and another of those dreadful, tearless spasms seized me. Everything--all life--was going on just the same; even in this very house they were eating and drinking as they ate and drank before--the very people who had talked with him this day; the very table at which he had sat this morning. Oh! they were so heartless and selfish: every one was; life itself was. I did not know where to turn for comfort. I had a feeling of dreading every one, of shrinking away from every one. "Oh!" I said to myself, "if Richard is with them at the table, I never want to see him again." But Richard was not with them. In a moment or two he came to the door, only to ask me if I wanted anything, and to say he would come back by-and-by. There was a question which I longed so frantically to ask him, but which I dared not; my life seemed to hang on the answer. _When were they going to take him away?_ I had heard something about trains and carriages, and I had a wild dread that it was soon to be. I went to the door and called Richard back, and made him understand what I wanted to know. He looked troubled, and said in a low tone, "At four o'clock we go from here to meet the earliest train. I have telegraphed his friends, and have had an answer. I am going down myself, and it is all arranged in the best way, I think. Go and lie down now, Pauline; I will come and take you down soon as the house is quiet." Richard went away unconscious of the stab his news had given me. I had not counted on anything so sudden as this parting. While he was in the house, while I was again to look upon his face, the end had not come; there was a sort of hope, though only a hope of suffering, something to look forward to, before black monotony began its endless day. CHAPTER XVII. BESIDE HIM ONCE AGAIN. There are blind ways provided, the foredone Heart-weary player in this pageant world Drops out by, letting the main masque defile By the conspicuous portal. _R. Browning_. What is this world? What asken men to have? Now with his love--now in his cold grave-- Alone, withouten any companie! _Chaucer_.