isfy himself once more that
she was not hidden behind some cabinet, or door, or curtain--that he
should not find her there with madness in her eyes, looking and looking,
and yet not seeing him.

But at last those five long days and nights were at an end, the funeral
was over, and the carriages were returning through the park. When they
had set out, a heavy rain was falling; but now the clouds were breaking
up, and a gleam of sunshine was sparkling among the dripping boughs under
which they were passing. This gleam fell upon a man on horseback who was
jogging slowly along, and whom Mr. Gilfil recognized, in spite of
diminished rotundity, as Daniel Knott, the coachman who had married the
rosy-cheeked Dorcas ten years before.

Every new incident suggested the same thought to Mr. Gilfil; and his eye
no sooner fell on Knott than he said to himself 'Can he be come to tell
us anything about Caterina?' Then he remembered that Caterina had been
very fond of Dorcas, and that she always had some present ready to send
her when Knott paid an occasional visit to the Manor. Could Tina have
gone to Dorcas? But his heart sank again as he thought, very likely Knott
had only come because he had heard of Captain Wybrow's death, and wanted
to know how his old master had borne the blow.

As soon as the carriage reached the house, he went up to his study and
walked about nervously, longing, but afraid, to go down and speak to
Knott, lest his faint hope should be dissipated. Any one looking at that
face, usually so full of calm goodwill, would have seen that the last
week's suffering had left deep traces. By day he had been riding or
wandering incessantly, either searching for Caterina himself, or
directing inquiries to be made by others. By night he had not known
sleep--only intermittent dozing, in which he seemed to be finding
Caterina dead, and woke up with a start from this unreal agony to the
real anguish of believing that he should see her no more. The clear grey
eyes looked sunken and restless, the full careless lips had a strange
tension about them, and the brow, formerly so smooth and open, was
contracted as if with pain. He had not lost the object of a few months'
passion; he had lost the being who was bound up with his power of loving,
as the brook we played by or the flowers we gathered in childhood are
bound up with our sense of beauty. Love meant nothing for him but to love
Caterina. For years, the thought of her had been prese