She was no castle-builder; there were no schemes, plans, designs, in her mind; no airy structures of future happiness employed fancy as their architect. She was happy in her own heart; and imagination, like a bee, extracted sweetness from the flowers of the present. Sweet Emily, how beautiful she looked, as she lay there, and made a night-life for herself in the world of her own thoughts! She could not sleep, she knew not why. Indeed, she did not wish or try to sleep. She never did when sleep did not come naturally; but always remained calmly waiting for the soother, till slumber dropped uncalled and stilly upon her eyelids. One hour--two hours--the moonbeam had retired far into a corner of the room, the household was all still; there was no sound but the barking of a distant farm-dog, such a long way off, that it reached the ear more like an echo than a sound, and the crowing of a cock, not much more near. Suddenly, her door opened, and a figure entered, bearing a small night-lamp. Emily started, and gazed. She was not much given to fear, and she uttered not a sound; for which command over herself she was very thankful, when, in the tall, graceful form before her, she recognized Mrs. Hazleton. She was dressed merely as she had risen from her bed: her rich black hair bound up under her snowy cap, her long night-gown trailing on the ground, and her feet bare. Yet she looked perhaps more beautiful than in jewels and ermine. Her eyes were not fixed and motionless, though there was a certain sort of deadness in them. Neither were her movements stiff and mechanical, as we often see in the representations of somnambulism on the stage. On the contrary, they were free and graceful. She looked neither like Mrs. Siddons nor any other who ever acted what she really was. Those who have seen the state know better. She was walking in her sleep, however: that strange act of a life apart from waking life--that mystery of mysteries, when the soul seems severed from all things on earth but the body which it inhabits--when the mind sleeps, but the spirit wakes--when the animal and the spiritual live together, yet the intellectual lies dead for the time. Emily comprehended her condition at once, and waited and watched, having heard that it is dangerous to wake suddenly a person in such a state. Mrs. Hazleton walked on past her bed towards a door at the other side of the room, but stopped opposite the toilet-table, took up a ribbon that was lying on it, and held it in her hand for a moment. "I hate him!" she said aloud; "but strangle him--oh, no! That would not do. It would leave a blue mark. I hate him, and her too! They can't help it--they must fall into the trap."