continued rain, to run rampant over
the flowers and kitchen-vegetables. Maule's well had overflowed its
stone border, and made a pool of formidable breadth in that corner of
the garden.

The impression of the whole scene was that of a spot where no human
foot had left its print for many preceding days,--probably not since
Phoebe's departure,--for she saw a side-comb of her own under the table
of the arbor, where it must have fallen on the last afternoon when she
and Clifford sat there.

The girl knew that her two relatives were capable of far greater
oddities than that of shutting themselves up in their old house, as
they appeared now to have done. Nevertheless, with indistinct
misgivings of something amiss, and apprehensions to which she could not
give shape, she approached the door that formed the customary
communication between the house and garden. It was secured within,
like the two which she had already tried. She knocked, however; and
immediately, as if the application had been expected, the door was
drawn open, by a considerable exertion of some unseen person's
strength, not wide, but far enough to afford her a sidelong entrance.
As Hepzibah, in order not to expose herself to inspection from without,
invariably opened a door in this manner, Phoebe necessarily concluded
that it was her cousin who now admitted her.

Without hesitation, therefore, she stepped across the threshold, and
had no sooner entered than the door closed behind her.

XX The Flower of Eden

PHOEBE, coming so suddenly from the sunny daylight, was altogether
bedimmed in such density of shadow as lurked in most of the passages of
the old house. She was not at first aware by whom she had been
admitted. Before her eyes had adapted themselves to the obscurity, a
hand grasped her own with a firm but gentle and warm pressure, thus
imparting a welcome which caused her heart to leap and thrill with an
indefinable shiver of enjoyment. She felt herself drawn along, not
towards the parlor, but into a large and unoccupied apartment, which
had formerly been the grand reception-room of the Seven Gables. The
sunshine came freely into all the uncurtained windows of this room, and
fell upon the dusty floor; so that Phoebe now clearly saw--what,
indeed, had been no secret, after the encounter of a warm hand with
hers--that it was not Hepzibah nor Clifford, but Holgrave, to whom she
owed her reception. The subtile,