Suddenly, her door opened, and a figure entered, bearing a small night-lamp. Emily started, and gazed. She was pot 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." Emily rose quietly from her bed, and advancing with a soft step, took Mrs. Hazleton's hand gently. She made no resistance, only gazing at her with a look not utterly devoid of meaning. "A strange world!" she said, "where people must live with those they hate!" and suffered Emily to lead her towards the door. She showed some reluctance to pass it, however, and turned slowly towards the other door. Her beautiful young guide led her thither, and opened it; then went on through the neighboring room, which was vacant, Mrs. Hazleton saying, as they passed the large bed canopied with velvet, "My mother died there--ah, me!" The next door opened into the corridor; but Emily knew not where her hostess slept, till perceiving a light streaming out upon the floor from a room near the end, she guided Mrs. Hazleton's steps thither, rightly judging that it must be the chamber she had just left. There she quietly induced her to go to bed again, taking the lamp from her hand, and bending down her sweet, innocent face, gave her a gentle kiss.