In the evening, just before sunset, I heard wheels approaching, and on looking out, saw the post-chaise which was to take us to Cambridge coming down the avenue. My father saw it also; we neither of us said anything, but I went away at once to put on my bonnet. It was dreadful to go into these desolate rooms, which were all the more desolate because they were not entirely dismantled, but still had pieces of very old furniture here and there, looking like remains of a wreck. After I had left my own room--a vague dusty wilderness now, with the damp air sighing in at the open lattice, and the loose jessamine bough beating against it, and dropping its dreary little leaves--I stole into the dining parlor for a moment to look at that picture which was like Edgar Southcote. I looked up at it with my warm human feelings, my young, young exaggerated emotions, full of resentful dislike and prejudice; it looked down on me, calm, beautiful, melancholy, like a face out of the skies. Pity, pity, yes! I hurried away stung by the thought. Edgar Southcote had the presumption to pity my father and me. With a last compunctious recollection of my poor young mother, I went to the garden and tenderly brought away that last rose. I could cry over _it_, without feeling that I wept because Cottiswoode was my cousin's and not mine. "I will always keep it!" I said to myself, as I wrapped some of the fragrant olive-colored leaves of the walnut round its stalk; and then I went in to my father to say I was ready. He had left the library, and was walking through the house--I could hear his slow heavy footsteps above me as I listened breathlessly in the hall. Whitehead, and the other servants, had collected there to say good-bye. Whitehead, who was an old man, was to remain in charge of the house; but all the others, except his niece Amy, were to go away this very night. While I stood trying to speak to them, and trying very hard not to break down again, my father came down stairs, went into the dining-parlor, and passed through the window into the garden. I thought he wished to escape the farewell of the servants, so I said good-bye hurriedly and followed him; but he was only walking up and down, looking at the house. He took my hand mechanically, as I came up to him, and led me along the walk in silence; then I was very much startled to find that he took hold of my arm, and leaned on it as if he wanted a support. I looked up at him wistfully when he paused at last--_he_ was looking up at a window above; but he must have felt how anxiously my eyes sought his face, for he said slowly, as if he were answering a question, "Hester, I have _lived_ here." I did not dare to say anything, but I held very close to my heart my mother's rose; he was thinking of her then, he was not thinking of pity nor of any bitterness.