The one candle had been placed drearily among the little coloured glass vases on the mantel-shelf; but the moonlight shone broad and full into the window, and, pouring its rays over the whole visible scene without, made something grand and solemn even of this genteel and silent Bellevue. The tranquil whiteness on these humble roofs--the distinctness with which one branch here and there, detached and taken possession of by the light, marked out its half-developed buds against the sky--the strange magic which made that faint ascending streak of smoke the ethereal plaything of these moonbeams--and the intense blackness of the shadow, deep as though it fell from one of the pyramids, of these homely garden-walls--made a wonderful and striking picture of a scene which had not one remarkable feature of its own; and the solitary figure crossing the road, all enshrined and hallowed in this silvery glory, but itself so dark and undistinguishable, was like a figure in a vision--an emblematic and symbolical appearance, entering like a picture to the spectator’s memory. The two girls stood looking out, with their arms entwined, and their fair heads close together, as is the wont of such companions, watching the wayfarer, whose weary footstep was inaudible in the great hush and whisper of the night. “I always fancy one might see ghosts in moonlight,” said Marian, under her breath. Certainly that solitary passenger, with all the silvered folds of his dress, and the gliding and noiseless motion of his progress, was not entirely unlike one. “He looks like a man in a parable,” said Agnes, in the same tone. “One could think he was gliding away mysteriously to do something wrong. See, now, he has gone into the shadow. I cannot see him at all--he has quite disappeared--it is so black. Ah! I shall think he is always standing there, looking over at us, and plotting something. I wish Charlie would come home--how long he is!” “Who would plot anything against us?” said innocent Marian, with her fearless smile. “People do not have enemies now as they used to have--at least not common people. I wish he would come out again, though, out of that darkness. I wonder what sort of man he could be.” But Agnes was no longer following the man; her eye was wandering vaguely over the pale illumination of the sky. “I wonder what will happen to us all?” said Agnes, with a sigh--sweet sigh of girlish thought that knew no care! “I think we are all beginning now, Marian, every one of us. I wonder what will happen--Charlie and all?” “Oh, I can tell you,” said Marian; “and you first of all, because you are the eldest. We shall all be famous, Agnes, every one of us; all because of you.”