"There was no rest for me that day. One thought occupied my whole mind: he was going in the morning--going I knew not whither, and the history of the last two weeks would be henceforth all of life that I should care to remember. I wandered from room to room, wondering what course I could take, and how it would be possible to appease the aching pain at my heart. Sometimes I could hear his voice rising up from the veranda. It was low and grave, sometimes I thought constrained, as if the words he uttered came from a preoccupied heart. "No criminal ever listened for the steps that were to bring him a reprieve with more interest, than I felt in gathering up the broken sentences of that conversation. He was going away, first to New Orleans, then back to New York, where business must suffer until his return. I heard this clearly. It was no rash speech, but a settled determination; yet up to that morning he had never spoken of it." CHAPTER LXX. THE MIDNIGHT WALK. "I could not sleep, though I had seemed tranquil all the evening. Mr. Dennison, having been broken in his rest the night before, slumbered heavily, and this made my wakeful solitude unendurable. The moon shone brightly, and the cool air came through the window with enticing sweetness. All day long I had been cramped and restless in the house, which was growing hateful to me. Oh how I longed for that grand solitude which lies in space! A wild desire to escape from the deep breathing of my husband seized upon my mind. I dressed myself in noiseless haste, and gliding down-stairs, opened a French window, and fled through it breathlessly. I had no object in view, and all places were alike to me, so long as I could breathe freely, and cry aloud without fear of being overheard. But a footpath lay before me, and I followed it on and on till I came to the pond, or lake, which I had visited with Lawrence on the first day of his coming. It was perfectly beautiful that night. Here and there a ripple, as of ten thousand diamond chains tossed on the waters, followed some current, and died off in the shadows. The dusky green of the magnolia-tree was kindled up with gleams and touches of silver, while its sleeping flowers filled their great chalices of snow with moonlight, and bathed themselves in its dewy radiance. If my heart had not been sad before, the exquisite stillness of this scene would have rendered it so; the very ripple of the waters among the lily pads affected me like music, and the dark trailing of the mistletoe-boughs, which were strangling the great live-oak with ten thousand leafy caresses, made me almost afraid, they were so ghostly.