Long after Louisa had undressed and lain down, she watched and
waited for her brother's coming home. That could hardly be, she
knew, until an hour past midnight; but in the country silence,
which did anything but calm the trouble of her thoughts, time
lagged wearily. At last, when the darkness and stillness had
seemed for hours to thicken one another, she heard the bell at the
gate. She felt as though she would have been glad that it rang on
until daylight; but it ceased, and the circles of its last sound
spread out fainter and wider in the air, and all was dead again.
She waited yet some quarter of an hour, as she judged. Then she
arose, put on a loose robe, and went out of her room in the dark,
and up the staircase to her brother's room. His door being shut,
she softly opened it and spoke to him, approaching his bed with a
noiseless step.
She kneeled down beside it, passed her arm over his neck, and drew
his face to hers. She knew that he only feigned to be asleep, but
she said nothing to him.
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