was you? Go now, at once. This is no hour
for conversation."

He did not move, but stood gazing at her white shoulders, as if they
had been a vision. With ready tact, she felt that it was now too late
to cover them with a shawl, while a retreat towards the darker part of
the room, would have been an insult to herself.

"Do you hear me?" she repeated, in a tone he could not but obey; "I
choose to be alone just now. Any thing you can have to say to me, must
keep. I am more vexed than you seem to be aware of. To think that _you_
could deceive me! If it should happen again, we two are parted."

His eyes fell before her angry looks, and then she turned away
abruptly, and went back to the table, as though he had been already
gone, and he did go. She heard him gently shut the door, and slowly
walk across the adjoining room.

Before the last lingering step had died away, she was already steeped
in the bitterness of remorse and self-rebuke. She had condemned him
without a hearing. She called up the mute reproach of those mournful
eyes that had been gazing on her, and pictured to herself what he had
felt, when she had dismissed him thus. That day had separated them
more than they had ever been before. He had not been able to go to
sleep without talking it over, as they had always done. Now he had
come innocently to her door, and had answered her enquiry without
thinking--certainly without meaning mischief, and he had been sent away
like a detected culprit; expiating, unawares, the outrage of another
man, an hour before.

She found it so intolerable to be alone with this remorse, that she
fastened on her dress again, took up her light, and went into the
sitting-room.

She would have liked best to go straight up to his garret-room, to
excuse the flightiness of her temper, and to beg him to forget it and
forgive her, but from this, on reflection, she desisted. She would
rather go downstairs to old Christel, she thought, and speak to her
about some household matters; for which, to be sure, there was no
hurry, but she was yearning for the sound of some familiar human voice.

When she came to the landing place, she was not a little startled at
seeing Walter sitting in the dark, on the upper steps, leaning his head
upon both his hands. She could not be certain whether he was awake, or
had fallen asleep; for he did not move when the door opened behind him.
She set down her candlestick upon the top of the banisters, and in a
mom