Lady Wantley looked at him fixedly. 'If they, my father and my husband, have forsaken me,' she said slowly,'I am not fit for other company. In my great distress, in my extreme abasement, only my mother has remained faithful; she alone has had the courage to descend with me into the Pit. My kinsfolk have failed and my familiar friends have forgotten me. You know--you remember, Ludovic, that he--my husband, I mean--never left me. For nearly fifty years we were together, inseparable--forty years in the flesh, ten years in the spirit; where he went I followed; where I chose to go he accompanied me, and guarded me from trouble. But now,' she said--and, oh! so woefully--'I have not felt his presence, or heard his voice, for upwards of a year.' Wantley got up: he turned away, and, walking to the great bay-window, looked out on the darkening, snow-bound landscape. This stretching out, this appeal of her soul, as it were, to his, moved him as might have done the intolerable sight of some poor creature enduring the extremity of physical torment. Again he came to her, again took her thin, burning hand in his, and then, murmuring something of his wife, abruptly left her. III Cecily was still lying on the sofa where he had placed her. The fire alone lighted up the fine old luxurious room, softening the bright green of the damask curtains, bathing the low gilt couch and the figure lying on it in rosy light. With a gesture most unusual with him, Wantley flung himself on his knees by his wife: he gathered her head and shoulders in his arms, pressed the soft hair off her forehead, and kissed her with an almost painful emotion. 'You will find her very altered,' he said hoarsely; 'I wonder if I ought to let you see her. I'm afraid you will be distressed, and I cannot let you be distressed just now!' 'Has she been too much left alone? Oh, Ludovic, I wish we had come before! Perhaps the nurse--the woman who has just left--was not kind to her.' Cecily was starting up, but he held her back, exceedingly perplexed as to what to do and what to say. 'No,' he said at last; and then, carefully choosing his words, 'She did not speak of the nurse, and I do not suppose that any one has been outwardly disrespectful or unkind to her. But, dearest, before you go up to her, I think you should be prepared to find her in a very pitiful state. I dare say you've forgotten once speaking to me at Monk's Eype concerning her belief that she was in close communication with the dead whom she loved? Well, now she unhappily believes that her husband has forsaken her, that his spirit no longer holds communication with hers.' Wantley's voice broke. 'To hear her talk of it, of her agony and loneliness, is horribly sad; and although I do not actually believe that my uncle was, as she says, always with her, I could not help thinking of ourselves--of how I should feel, my darling, if you were to turn from me.' 'But,' said Cecily, clinging to him, 'I could never, never turn from you!'