n voice of Mrs. Renton,--a serene and polished
lady with whom he had lived for years in cold and civil alienation,
both seeing as little of each other as possible. With a scowl of
will upon his brow, he received her image distinctly into his mind,
even to the minutia of the dress and ornaments he knew she wore,
and felt an absolutely savage exultation in his ability to retain
it. Then came the sound of the closing of the hall door and the
rattle of receding wheels, and somehow it was Nathalie and not
his wife that he was holding so grimly in his thought, and with
her, salient and vivid as before, the tormenting remembrance of
his tenant, connected with the memory of George Feval. Springing
to his feet, he walked the room.
He had thrown himself on a sofa, still striving to be rid of his
remorseful visitations, when the library door opened, and the inside
man appeared, with his hand held bashfully over his nose. It flashed
on him at once that his tenant's husband was the servant of a family
like this fellow; and, irritated that the whole matter should be
thus broadly forced upon him in another way, he harshly asked him
what he wanted. The man only came in to say that Mrs. Renton and
the young lady had gone out for the evening, but that tea was laid
for him in the dining-room. He did not want any tea, and if anybody
called, he was not at home. With this charge, the man left the
room, closing the door behind him.
If he could but sleep a little! Rising from the sofa, he turned
the lights of the chandelier low, and screened the fire. The room
was still. The ghost stood, faintly radiant, in a remote corner. Dr.
Renton lay down again, but not to repose. Things he had forgotten
of his dead friend, now started up again in remembrance, fresh from
the grave of many years; and not one of them but linked itself
by some mysterious bond to something connected with his tenant,
and became an accusation.
He had lain thus for more than an hour, feeling more and more unmanned
by illness, and his mental excitement fast becoming intolerable,
when he heard a low strain of music, from the Swedenborgian chapel,
hard by. Its first impression was one of solemnity and rest, and its
first sense, in his mind, was of relief. Perhaps it was the music
of an evening meeting; or it might be that the organist and choir
had met for practice. Whatever its purpose, it breathed through his
heated fancy like a cool and fragrant wind. It was vague and swe
|