An accident, arising out of her very devotion to Vinal, had made known his secret to her. In the anteroom which led from the side passage of the hotel to his apartment, and through which, on the morning of his interview with Morton, she had intended to pass on her way out, was a table, covered with books and engravings, with which the invalid had been amusing his leisure. The sight of them reminded her that she had promised to get for him a series of German etchings, which he had expressed a wish to see. She seated herself, to write a request to the friend who had them, that he would send them to the hotel. Her hand was on the bell, to call the servant, when the peculiarly emphatic and earnest manner with which Vinal greeted some new visitor caught her attention. The door had sprung ajar on the lock; the speakers were very near it, and Morton's tone was none of the softest. She remained as if charmed to her seat; and every word fell on her ear as clearly as if she had stood in the same room. CHAPTER LXI. I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano, A stage where every man must play a part, And mine a sad one.--_Merchant of Venice_. The past is past. I see the future stretch All dark and barren as a rainy sea.--_Alexander Smith_. Morton took possession again of his house in the country, which still remained in the keeping of one of his humble relatives, into whose charge he had given it. He turned the key of his long-deserted library. A loving influence had presided here in his absence, and, even when he was given up for lost, every thing had been scrupulously kept as he had left it. Here he immured himself; avoided all society but that of a few personal friends; and by plunging into the studies which had formerly engrossed him, tried to escape the persecution of his own thoughts. It was a forced and painful task. The marks in his books, the pencil notes on their margins, his voluminous piles of memoranda, were all so many sharp memorials of the past, to remind him that he was resuming in darkness and despondency the work that he had left in sunshine. In process of time, however, his ancient interest in his favorite pursuit began to rekindle. He began to feel that the years of his imprisonment had not been the dead and barren blank which he had inclined to think them. His mind had ripened in its solitude, and the studies which he had before followed with the zeal of a boy, more eager than able to deal with the broad questions which they involved, he could now grasp with the matured intellect of a man.