A curious feeling assailed her now, as she looked at these yellowing
papers, eloquent of dead days; and at the mourning ribbon, significant
of emotions keen and bitter in the living, but buried now under the
weight of newer things. How strange, how distant and impersonal, the
pages seemed! And yet the time had been when every written line had
played its part in some human, personal endeavour! Each document had
represented loss or gain to some individual; each letter had conveyed
its fragment of earthly sentiment. Moved suddenly by the suggestions of
the moment, she untied the string.

A faint, dry odour rose from the loosened papers--the intangible scent
that indicates the past. It seemed that some world, distant and
forgotten, had suddenly put forth a shadowy hand, pointing she knew not
whither. Over her brain, fevered from the night's excitement, fell a
stillness--an arresting calm; across her thoughts, distorted by
mistaken struggles, glided a memory--a picture. She saw herself as she
had been before her marriage, in the far-off isolated days when life
had been a simple thing, when the world outside Orristown had been a
golden realm lying beyond the sunset.

How young she had been then! How extraordinarily, indescribably young!
How untrammelled in her actions and sweeping in her judgments! As the
old existence pressed about her in a cloud of images, she opened the
first letter. But so unsteadily, so agitatedly, that, in the opening,
five or six of the pages slipped from the packet and fluttered to the
writing-table, bringing with them a small unframed ivory miniature that
had been wrapped within the sheets.

The thin, fragile picture dropped with a faint tinkling sound; Clodagh
bent forward to recover it; then paused, leaning over the table in an
attitude of attention. The miniature lay face upwards; and, in the
strong light of the lamp, its outline and colours shone forth
distinctly. It represented the head and shoulders of a man in a scarlet
coat and hunting-stock--a man of thirty, with a handsome, defiant face,
fine eyes, and an obstinate, unreliable mouth.

It lay, looking up into her face, while she stared back at it, as
though a ghost had risen from the faded letters. On the night before
her marriage she had come upon this miniature of Denis Asshlin; and in
a frenzy of renewed grief had thrust it out of sight amongst the papers
she had collected. Then, the picture had seemed pitifully sad in its
presentment