Nevertheless, enough of the effect of these few moments of parental anxiety remained, to fling a slight shadow over the party. Carice felt it first, in her quick sympathy with all her parents' moods; and Bergan caught it from her as speedily as if there were already some invisible bond between the two. Without knowing why, he very soon became aware that the atmosphere was again growing chill around him. He had been basking, not in a broad glory of summer, but only in a flicker of winter sunshine.
Under these circumstances, Mr. Bergan's announcement that it was time to set forth for the five o'clock service, was heard as a relief. Almost immediately, however, it was followed by an unreasoning pang of regret. It needed no soothsayer to tell him that moments like those just passed, were to be rare in his immediate experience of life.
Dusk was fast gathering in the corners and under the arches of the little church, when the service was over. Parting with his relatives at the door, Bergan went his solitary way to his lodgings, through the deepening twilight. He walked slowly, not that the road was so pleasant, but because the end had so little attraction. The walls and furniture of his room were still strangers to him;--no one corner would allure him with a more familiar charm than another, no particular chair would draw him irresistibly to its accustomed arms, no sweet, tangled crop of associations would fling their mingled light and shadow across the floor. It would all be dim, blank, lonely. And the foot falls but heavily on the path, the termination of which neither habit nor excites imagination!
Nevertheless, the slowest progress brings one quickly to the end, if the journey be short; and Bergan's lingering steps brought him to Mrs. Lyte's gate ere the dusk had deepened into total obscurity. Entering the wide hall, which extended through the whole depth of the house, he saw Mrs. Lyte seated at the farther end, in a doorway opening on the garden. Her little daughter Cathie was sobbing at her side, in what seemed an uncontrollable passion of grief and indignation. The child's protector and playmate, a half-superannuated old mastiff, named Nix, sat on his haunches at a little distance, watching the scene with sympathetic, intelligent eyes.