chooses to call the first hour after a ball, and Mr. Raleigh was making
some arrangements preliminary to his departure, in his own apartments,
at about the hour of noon. The rooms which he had formerly occupied Mrs.
McLean had always kept closed, in a possibility of his return, and he
had found himself installed in them upon his arrival. The library was
today rather a melancholy room: the great book-cases did not enliven it;
the grand-piano, with its old dark polish, seemed like a coffin, the
sarcophagus of unrisen music; the oak panelling had absorbed a richer
hue with the years than once it wore; the portrait of his mother seemed
farther withdrawn from sight and air; Antinoüs took a tawnier tint in
his long reverie. The Summer, past her height, sent a sad beam, the
signal of decay, through the half-open shutters, and it lay wearily on
the man who sat by the long table, and made more sombre yet the faded
carpet and cumbrous chair.

There was a tap on the door. Mr. Raleigh rose and opened it, and invited
Mr. Laudersdale in. The latter gentleman complied, took the chair
resigned by the other, but after a few words became quiet. Mr. Raleigh
made one or two attempts at conversation, then, seeing silence to be his
visitor's whim, suffered him to indulge it, and himself continued his
writing. Indeed, the peculiar relations existing between these men made
much conversation difficult. Mr. Laudersdale sat with his eyes upon
the floor for several minutes, and his countenance wrapped in thought.
Rising, with his hands behind him, he walked up and down the long room,
still without speaking.

"Can I be of service to you, Sir?" asked the other, after observing him.

"Yes, Mr. Raleigh, I am led to think you can,"--still pacing up and
down, and vouchsafing no further information.