“Ah, my poor, dear Hagar, how little these wild fancies of yours will bestead you in the trials and temptations of life. Oh! what an untrimmed vine you are, Hagar! May the pruning knife of God’s providence gently, very gently, remove all this bad over-growth.” Hagar’s fierce eyes flashed defiance at her monitress; but just then a vision of Raymond, in his lonely grief—of Raymond, the only heart-stricken mourner for the dead, passed before her mind’s eye; the fierceness softened in her eyes, and she glided from the room. Just at that moment tea was brought in, and Mr. Buncombe and Dr. Otterback summoned to the table, and with Emily, gathered around it. Hagar glided like a spirit up the long staircase. The storm had passed, and the moon was shining through the windows. She passed into an upper room. A dark figure intercepted at the window the rays of the moon. A dark figure sitting alone, with head dropped upon the arms that, folded, rested on the window-sill. Very softly she approached, and stood by him in silence. He felt her approach, however, and turning around, passed his arm around her waist, and, drawing her up to his side, murmured— “My own dear Hagar, you have come to me at last; you are here at last; why did you not come before?” “Because _then_, Raymond, I was in no condition to give you comfort in the mood _you_ then were; my mind was excited, enthusiastic. I could not feel this passing away as anything but a relief—a glory—could not think of it as anything to mourn for, but rather to rejoice at. Why, Raymond, death has been called a ‘leap in the dark,’ but to me it seems a bound in the light!” “Ah, but Hagar,—the flesh—the flesh—I loved my father so much; I loved him for all his sorrows, and because he found favor in no other heart. I suffered so much at the banishment endured for his sake, and now I come home only to light him down to the grave.” “Raymond, when you left here, some years ago, you left your cast off raiment in your chamber, and they packed it down in a trunk. When you stepped aboard the boat that carried you to the packet, I, impatient child! threw myself down, and screamed in anguish, at parting from my brother, or stretching out my arms beseechingly, called you to come back. Now, Raymond, according to your creed, I had better have gone and cast myself across your trunk—the grave of your cast off dress, and howled for Raymond, _coffined within_.” Raymond again answered her, for his was not after all that deep, _deep_ grief which plunges its victim into silence. “I loved that soul-raiment—I loved that thin and wrinkled hand, that lately deprecated harsh judgment while it caressed me—I loved that tortured face, traversed as it was by its thousand seams of thought or suffering, and that slow pausing step. I loved it all—but _you_, Hagar, a woman—a girl, a young girl, and yet you have so little _tenderness_—the falcon, not the dove!”