left! The hall was lighted with a soft lamp, showing
dull, warm colors on walls and floor. The dining-room door stood open; a
wood-fire was roaring on the hearth, and candles were burning on a snowy
table spread for a meal. Dorothy had a chamber-candle in her hand. She
showed the Polwarths into the dining-room, then turning to Juliet, said,

"I will take you to your room, dear."

"I have prepared your old quarters for you," she said, as they went up
the stair.

With the words there rushed upon Juliet such a memory of mingled
dreariness and terror, that she could not reply.

"You know it will be safest," added Dorothy, and as she spoke, set the
candle on a table at the top of the stair. They went along the passage,
and she opened the door of the closet. All was dark.

She opened the door in the closet, and Juliet started back with
amazement. It was the loveliest room! and--like a marvel in a
fairy-tale--the great round moon was shining gloriously, first through
the upper branches of a large yew, and then through an oriel window,
filled with lozenges of soft greenish glass, through which fell a lovely
picture on the floor in light and shadow and something that was neither
or both. Juliet turned in delight, threw her arms round Dorothy, and
kissed her.

"I thought I was going into a dungeon," she said, "and it is a room for
a princess!"

"I sometimes almost believe, Juliet," returned Dorothy, "that God will
give us a great surprise one day."

Juliet was tired, and did not want to hear about God. If Dorothy had
done all this, she thought, for the sake of reading her a good lesson,
it spoiled it all. She did not understand the love that gives beyond the
gift, that mantles over the cup and spills the wine into the spaces of
eternal hope. The room was so delicious that she begged to be excused
from going down to supper. Dorothy suggested it would not be gracious to
her friends. Much as she respected, and indeed loved them, Juliet
resented the word _friends_, but yielded.

The little two would themselves rather have gone home--it was so
late--but staid, fearing to disappoint Dorothy. If they did run a risk
by doing so, it was for a good reason--therefore of no great
consequence.

"How your good father will delight to watch you here sometimes, Miss
Drake," said Polwarth, "if those who are gone are permitted to see,
walking themselves unseen."

Juliet shuddered. Dorothy's father not two months gone and the dreadful