to breakfast, he
responded only by a broken-hearted murmur, expressive of a
determination not to leave his bed. His sister made no attempt to
change his purpose. In fact, entirely as she loved him, Hepzibah could
hardly have borne any longer the wretched duty--so impracticable by her
few and rigid faculties--of seeking pastime for a still sensitive, but
ruined mind, critical and fastidious, without force or volition. It
was at least something short of positive despair, that to-day she might
sit shivering alone, and not suffer continually a new grief, and
unreasonable pang of remorse, at every fitful sigh of her fellow
sufferer.

But Clifford, it seemed, though he did not make his appearance below
stairs, had, after all, bestirred himself in quest of amusement. In
the course of the forenoon, Hepzibah heard a note of music, which
(there being no other tuneful contrivance in the House of the Seven
Gables) she knew must proceed from Alice Pyncheon's harpsichord. She
was aware that Clifford, in his youth, had possessed a cultivated taste
for music, and a considerable degree of skill in its practice. It was
difficult, however, to conceive of his retaining an accomplishment to
which daily exercise is so essential, in the measure indicated by the
sweet, airy, and delicate, though most melancholy strain, that now
stole upon her ear. Nor was it less marvellous that the long-silent
instrument should be capable of so much melody. Hepzibah involuntarily
thought of the ghostly harmonies, prelusive of death in the family,
which were attributed to the legendary Alice. But it was, perhaps,
proof of the agency of other than spiritual fingers, that, after a few
touches, the chords seemed to snap asunder with their own vibrations,
and the music ceased.

But a harsher sound succeeded to the mysterious notes; nor was the
easterly day fated to pass without an event sufficient in itself to
poison, for Hepzibah and Clifford, the balmiest air that ever brought
the humming-birds along with it. The final echoes of Alice Pyncheon's
performance (or Clifford's, if his we must consider it) were driven
away by no less vulgar a dissonance than the ringing of the shop-bell.
A foot was heard scraping itself on the threshold, and thence somewhat
ponderously stepping on the floor. Hepzibah delayed a moment, while
muffling herself in a faded shawl, which had been her defensive armor
in a forty years' warfare against the east wind. A characteris