By and by appeared the faint
lights of the house, with blotchy pallors thinning the mist and
darkness. Presently the carriage stopped.
Both the children continued dead asleep, and were carried off to bed.
The father and mother knew the house of old time, and revived for each
other old memories. But to Hester all was strange, and what with the
long journey, the weariness, the sadness, and the strangeness, it was as
if walking in a dream that she entered the old hall. It had a quiet,
dull, dignified look, as if it expected nobody; as if it was here itself
because it could not help it, and would rather not be here; as if it had
seen so many generations come and go that it had ceased to care much
about new faces. Every thing in the house looked somber and solemn, as
if it had not forgotten its old mistress, who had been so many years in
it, and was such a little while gone out of it. They had supper in a
long, low room, with furniture almost black, against whose windows heavy
roses every now and then softly patted, caught in the fringes of the
rain gusts. The dusky room, the perfect stillness within, the low
mingled sounds of swaying trees and pattering rain without, the sense of
the great darkness folding in its bosom the beauty so near and the
moaning city miles upon miles away--all grew together into one
possessing mood, which rose and sank, like the water in a sea-cave, in
the mind of Hester.
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