He followed me as I went to the door--he followed me along the passage, perhaps he thought I needed his support, but I was firmer in my step than he was. I knew that his heart was yearning over me in my new grief--I knew it better than if he had told me--but my heart was not softened to him. I turned when I reached my door. "Why do you follow me?" said I, "is it not enough that I have lost everything?--leave me in peace to-night." He held out his hands to me, he caught mine. "Oh! Hester, Hester, weep, and weep with me," he cried, "do not condemn me to this outer darkness--let me be with you in your grief." I drew myself away from him. "No one can be with me in my grief, I am desolate," I said, but I waited for no answer. I closed my door, and he went away from the threshold--this threshold to which he had come for me when I was a bride. I went in and shut to my door. I shut the door of my heart, and closed myself up alone in this dreary, solitary place. I was not without a consciousness even now that I had left them all longing, anxious, miserable about me; but I felt as though they were all enemies--all enemies, as if I had not a friend in this wretched, forsaken world. I did not think what this real blow was which had struck upon me. I only felt my dreary, hopeless solitude, and the desire I had to be left here unmolested. I thought it would please me to see no more a human face again. I was in a wilderness more desolate than any Eastern waste--there were no hearers above me, and no human fellowship around. God and the Lord were words to me. I believed, but I did not know them--I could not seek refuge there, and here there was not one--not one of those I had loved so well, but had betrayed me. My little room, my bower, my girlish sanctuary which I had left in my bride's dress, I had returned to now, worse than a widow. Quietly and mechanically I began to take off my dress--it was not grief but misery which filled my heart, and there is a great difference between them. My wretchedness stupified me, and when I laid down my head upon my pillow, I fell at once into a heavy, deep sleep. THE FOURTH DAY. It was a clear, cold, sunshiny autumn morning, the atmosphere was full of sunshine, yet there was little warmth in the air, and there were thin misty clouds upon the sky, which looked like vapors which the earth had thrown off from her own still bosom, and the wind carried up unchanged. Yet out of doors it was a beautiful fresh day, and the sun beat in through our darkened windows with a full bright flash in mockery of our sombre shade. A dreary dull excitement was in the house--it was the funeral day.