while to the pond,
where there was that light to think by, more congenial even in its chill
clearness than the oppressive dark. It changed beneath his eyes, but
he took no notice; a star came into it and looked him in the face from
under the shadow of the great floating shelf of the water-lily leaves;
and then came the blue of the dawn, the widening round him of the growing
light, the shimmer of the early midsummer morning, long, long before
those hours which men claim as the working day. That sudden bursting
forth of life and colour startled him in the midst of his dreams, and
he went home and stole into the sleeping, darkened house, where by dint
of curtains and shutters the twilight still reigned, with something of
the exhaustion and neglect of the morning after the feast. It was the
morning of the day which was to decide for him whether life should be
miserable or divine.

These were the words which the young man used in his infatuation. He
knew no others--miserable, so that he should no longer care what
happened to him, or believe in any good, which was the most probable
state of affairs; or divine, a life celestial, inconceivable, which was
indeed not to be dwelt upon for a moment as if under any suggestion of
possibility it could be.

Next day, Mrs. Warrender began at once her preparations for that removal
which she had so long contemplated, which had been so often postponed,
throwing Chatty into an excitement so full of conflicting elements,
that it was for some time difficult for the girl to know what her own
real sentiments were. She had been figuring to herself with a little
wistfulness, and an occasional escapade into dreams, the part which it
was now her duty to take up, that of her mother's chief companion, the
daughter of the house, the dutiful dweller at home, who should have no
heart and no thought beyond the Warren and its affairs. Chatty was
pleased enough with the former role. It had been delightful both to her
mother and herself to feel how much they had in common, when the great
authority on all family matters, the regulator of proprieties, the
mistress of the ceremonies, so to speak, was out of the way, and they
were left unmolested to follow their natural bent; but Chatty felt a
little sinking of the heart when she thought of being bound to the
Warren for ever; of the necessity there would be for her constant
services, and the unlikelihood of any further opening of life. While
there had been tw