pleasure as to Zillah to visit the old place, and Zillah
would not have dreamed of going any where without her.

[Illustration.]

Pomeroy Court looked very much as it had looked while Zillah was
living there. It had been well and even scrupulously cared for. The
grounds around showed marks of the closest attention. Inside, the old
housekeeper, who had remained after the General's death, with some
servants, had preserved every thing in perfect order, and in quite
the same state as when the General was living. This perfect
preservation of the past struck Zillah most painfully. As she
entered, the intermediate period of her life at Chetwynde seemed to
fade away. It was to her as though she were still living in her old
home. She half expected to see the form of her father in the hall.
The consciousness of her true position was violently forced upon her.
With the sharpness of the impression which was made upon her by the
unchanged appearance of the old home, there came another none less
sharp. If Pomeroy Court brought back to her the recollection of the
happy days once spent there, but now gone forever, it also brought to
her mind the full consciousness of her loss. To her it was _infandum
renovare dolorem_. She walked in a deep melancholy through the dear
familiar rooms. She lingered in profound abstraction and in the
deepest sadness over the mournful reminders of the past. She looked
over all the old home objects, stood in the old places, and sat in
the old seats. She walked in silence through all the house, and
finally went to her own old room, so loved, so well remembered. As
she crossed the threshold and looked around she felt her strength
give way. A great sob escaped her, and sinking into a chair where she
once used to sit in happier days, she gave herself up to her
recollections. For a long time she lost herself in these. Hilda had
left her to herself, as though her delicacy had prompted her not to
intrude upon her friend at such a moment; and Zillah thought of this
with a feeling of grateful affection. At length she resumed to some
degree her calmness, and summoning up all her strength, she went at
last to the chamber where that dread scene had been enacted--that
scene which seemed to her a double tragedy--that scene which had
burned itself in her memory, combining the horror of the death of her
dearest friend with the ghastly farce of a forced and unhallowed
marriage. In that place a full tide of misery rushe