e happiness of his child; yet the
very idea of separation caused his heart to bleed at every pore. By
degrees he stifled this selfish anxiety, and, striving to control
himself, raised his daughter with a kiss.

"Come, Lenora," said he, "be gay again! Isn't it a happy thing that our
hearts can sometimes get into the shade after they have been too much in
the sunshine? Let us go into the house. We have many arrangements to
make in order to receive our guests becomingly."

Lenora obeyed her father in silence, and followed him slowly, while the
tears still dropped from her beautiful eyes.

Some hours afterward Monsieur De Vlierbeck might have been seen seated
in the principal saloon of Grinselhof, near a little lamp, with his
elbows on the table. The apartment was dark and dreary, for the feeble
rushlight illuminated but a single spot and cast the distant and lofty
ceiling into vague obscurity. The flickering flame threw long and sombre
shadows over the wall, while a line of old portraits in the panels
seemed to fix their stern and immovable eyes on the table. Amid the
gloom nothing came out with distinctness but the calm and noble face of
the poor old gentleman, who sat there, absorbed in his reflections,
fixed as a statue.

At length, rising from his chair and cautiously walking on tiptoe to the
end of the room, he stopped and listened at the closed door. "She
sleeps," said he, in a low voice; and, raising his eyes to heaven,
added, with a sigh, "may God protect her rest!" Then, returning to the
table, he took the lamp, and, opening a large safe which was imbedded in
the wall, he went down on his knees and drew forth some napkins and a
table-cloth, which he unfolded carefully to see whether they were torn
or stained. As he refolded the articles one after the other, a smile
betokened that he was pleased with his examination. Rising from this
task, he went back to the table, from the drawer of which he took a
piece of buckskin and whiting. Mashing the latter with a knife-handle,
he began to rub and polish several silver forks and spoons which were in
a basket. The salt-cellars and other small articles of table-service,
which were mostly of the same metal, were all subjected to a similar
process, and soon glittered brightly in the feeble lamplight.

While he was engaged in this strange work, the soul of the poor old man
was busy with a thousand conflicting thoughts and recollections. He was
constantly muttering to himse