In about twenty minutes the drawing-room door opened, and they came out.
I heard George's voice saying this or something equivalent (afterwards
I could not accurately recall the words)--

"Good-night, Mr. Lascelles; I trust our next meeting may be a different
one."

The next sentences on both sides I lost. Edmund seems to have refused to
shake hands with Mr. Manners. The last words I heard were George's
half-laughing--

"Next time, Lascelles, I shall not ask for your hand--I shall take it."

Then the door shut, and Edmund went into his study. An hour later he
also went out, and I was left alone once more. I went back into the
drawing-room; the rose-leaves were fading on the floor; and on the table
lay George Manners' penknife. It was a new one, that he had been showing
to me, and had left behind him. I kissed it and put it in my pocket:
then I knelt down by the chair, Nell, and wept till I prayed; and then
prayed till I wept again; and then I got up and tidied the room, and got
some sewing; and, like other women, sat down with my trouble, waiting
for the storm to break.

It broke at eleven o'clock that night, when two men carried the dead
body of my brother into his own kitchen--foully murdered.

But when I knelt by the poor body, lying awfully still upon the table;
when I kissed the face, which in death had curiously regained the
appearance of reason as well as beauty; when I saw and knew that life
had certainly gone till the Resurrection:--that was not all. The storm