umined sashes proclaimed
that the master of the house was still in his library.

She seemed to feel relieved at this sight. Pausing, she leaned against
the frame of a trellis-work near by to gather up her courage or regain
her breath before proceeding to make her presence known to the lawyer.
As she thus leaned, the peal of the church clock was heard, striking the
hour of nine. She started, possibly at finding it so late, and bending
forward, looked at the windows before her with an anxious eye that soon
caught sight of a small opening left by the curtains having been drawn
together by a too hasty or a too careless hand, and recognizing the
opportunity it afforded for a glimpse into the room before her, stepped
with a light tread upon the piazza and quietly peered within.

The sight she saw never left her memory.

Seated before a deadened fire, she beheld Mr. Orcutt. He was neither
writing nor reading, nor, in the true sense of the word, thinking. The
papers he had evidently taken from his desk, lay at his side
undisturbed, and from one end of the room to the other, solitude,
suffering, and despair seemed to fill the atmosphere and weigh upon its
dreary occupant, till the single lamp which shone beside him burned
dimmer and dimmer, like a life going out or a purpose vanishing in the
gloom of a stealthily approaching destiny.

Imogene, who had come to this place thus secretly and at this late hour
of the day with the sole intent of procuring the advice of this man
concerning the deception which had been practised upon her before the
trial, felt her heart die within her as she surveyed this rigid figure
and realized all it implied. Though his position was such she could not
see his face, there was that in his attitude which bespoke hopelessness
and an utter weariness of life, and as ash after ash fell from the
grate, she imagined how the gloom deepened on the brow which till this
hour had confronted the world with such undeviating courage and
confidence.

It was therefore a powerful shock to her when, in another moment, he
looked up, and, without moving his body, turned his head slowly around
in such a way as to afford her a glimpse of his face. For, in all her
memory of it--and she had seen it distorted by many and various emotions
during the last few weeks--she had never beheld it wear such a look as
now. It gave her a new idea of the man; it filled her with dismay, and
sent the life-blood from her cheeks. It fasci