"Yes, a little. You can finish to-morrow."

Then she laid down the simple letter, and sat very still for a little
while. Her heart was busy. There is a solitary place that girdles our
life into which it is good to enter at the close of every day. There we
may sit still with our own soul, and commune with it; and out of its
peace pass easily into the shadowy kingdom of sleep, and find a little
space of rest prepared. So Charlotte sat in quiet meditation until
Sophia was fathoms deep below the tide of life. Sight, speech, feeling,
where were they gone? Ah! when the door is closed, and the windows
darkened, who can tell what passes in the solemn temple of mortality?
Are we unvisited then? Unfriended? Uncounselled?

"Behold!
The solemn spaces of the night are thronged
By bands of tender dreams, that come and go
Over the land and sea; they glide at will
Through all the dim, strange realms of men asleep,
And visit every soul."

CHAPTER VI.

THE DAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS.

"Still to ourselves in every place consigned.
Our own felicity we make or find."

"Catch, then, oh, catch the transient hour!
Improve each moment as it flies.
Life's a short summer, man a flower;
He dies, alas! how soon he dies!"

There are days which rise sadly, go on without sunshine, and pass into
night without one gleam of color. Life, also, has these pallid,
monotonous hours. A distrust of all things invades the soul, and
physical inertia and mental languor make daily existence a simple
weight. It was Christmas-time, but the squire felt none of the elation
of the season. He was conscious that the old festal preparations were
going on, but there was no response to them in his heart. Julius had
arrived, and was helping Sophia to hang the holly and mistletoe. But
Sandal knew that his soul shrank from the nephew he had called into his
life; knew that the sound of his voice irritated him, that his laugh
filled him with resentment, that his very presence in the house seemed
to desecrate it, and to slay for him the very idea of home.

He was sitting in the "master's room," wondering how the change had come
about. But he found nothing to answer the wonder, because he was looking
for some palpable wrong, some distinctive time or cause. He was himself
too simple-hearted to reflect that it is seldom a great fault which
destroys liking for a