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nt as though struck by my question, and then shook her head. 'No, no,' she said decidedly; 'he will not appear.' A very pretty little maidservant who was bringing in our luggage was so much perturbed by my innocent inquiry that she let the things drop. 'Hedwig, do not be a fool,' said the widow sternly. 'The gentleman,' she went on, turning to me, 'cannot come, because he is dead.' 'Oh,' I said, silenced by the excellence of the reason. Charlotte, being readier of speech, said 'Indeed.' The reason was a good one; but when I heard it it seemed as if the pleasant rooms with the beds all ready and everything set out for the expected one took on a look of awfulness. It is true it was now past eight o'clock, and the sun had gone, and across the bay the dusk was creeping. I went out through the long windows to the little verandah. It had white pillars of great apparent massiveness, which looked as though they were meant to support vast weights of masonry; and through them I watched the water rippling in slow, steely ripples along the sand just beneath me, and the ripples had the peculiar lonely sound that slight waves have in the evening when they lick a deserted shore. 'When was he expected?' I heard Charlotte, within the room, ask in a depressed voice. 'To-day,' said the widow. 'To-day?' echoed Charlotte. 'That is why the beds are made. It is lucky for you ladies.' 'Very,' agreed Charlotte; and her voice was hollow. 'He died yesterday--an accident. I received the telegram only this morning. It is a great misfortune for me. Will the ladies sup? I have some provisions in the house sent on by the gentleman for his supper to-night. He, poor soul, will never sup again.' The widow, more moved by this last reflection than she had yet been, sighed heavily. She then made the observation usual on such occasions that it is a strange world, and that one is here to-day and gone to-morrow--or rather, correcting herself, here yesterday and gone to-day--and that the one thing certain was the _schoenes Essen_ at that moment on the shelves of the larder. Would the ladies not seize the splendid opportunity and sup? 'No, no, we will not sup,' Charlotte cried with great decision. 'You won't eat here to-night, will you?' she asked through the yellow window-curtains, which made her look very pale. 'It is always horrid in lodgings. Shall we go to that nice red-brick hotel we passed, where the people were sitting under
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