ces of the rest of my visit to
Mark Ambient,--it lasted but a few hours longer,--and devote but three
words to my later acquaintance with him. That lasted five years,--till
his death,--and was full of interest, of satisfaction, and, I may add,
of sadness. The main thing to be said with regard to it, is that I had
a secret from him. I believe he never suspected it, though of this I
am not absolutely sure. If he did, the line he had taken, the line of
absolute negation of the matter to himself, shows an immense effort of
the will. I may tell my secret now, giving it for what it is worth, now
that Mark Ambient has gone, that he has begun to be alluded to as one of
the famous early dead, and that his wife does not survive him; now, too,
that Miss Ambient, whom I also saw at intervals during the years that
followed, has, with her embroideries and her attitudes, her necromantic
glances and strange intuitions, retired to a Sisterhood, where, as I am
told, she is deeply immured and quite lost to the world.

Mark came in to breakfast after his sister and I had for some time been
seated there. He shook hands with me in silence, kissed his sister,
opened his letters and newspapers, and pretended to drink his coffee.
But I could see that these movements were mechanical, and I was little
surprised when, suddenly, he pushed away everything that was before him,
and, with his head in his hands and his elbows on the table, sat staring
strangely at the cloth.

"What is the matter, _fratello mio?_" Miss Ambient inquired, peeping from
behind the urn.

He answered nothing, but got up with a certain violence and strode to
the window. We rose to our feet, his sister and I, by a common impulse,
exchanging a glance of some alarm, while he stared for a moment into the
garden. "In Heaven's name what has got possession of Beatrice?" he cried
at last, turning round with an almost haggard face. And he looked from
one of us to the other; the appeal was addressed to me as well as to his
sister.

Miss Ambient gave a shrug. "My poor Mark, Beatrice is always--Beatrice!"

"She has locked herself up with the boy--bolted and barred the door; she
refuses to let me come near him!" Ambient went on.

"She refused to let the doctor see him an hour ago!" Miss Ambient
remarked, with intention, as they say on the stage.

"Refused to let the doctor see him? By heaven, I 'll smash in the
door!" And Mark brought his fist down upon the table, so that all the
br