carried it out of sight. Then he lifted his eyes with a long sigh, and
looked round. Everywhere he saw Mrs. Yarrow's smiling face with that
inner pathos. It swarmed upon him from all points; and wherever he
turned it repeated itself in the distances like that succession of faces
you see when you stand between two mirrors.

It was not merely a lapse from his lately hopeful state with Alford, it
was a collapse. The man withered and dwindled away, till he felt that he
must audibly rattle in his clothes as he walked by people. He did not
walk much. Mostly he remained shrunken in the arm-chair where he used to
sit beside Mrs. Yarrow's rocker, and the ladies, the older and the
older-fashioned, who were "sticking it out" at the hotel till it should
close on the 15th of September, observed him, some compassionately,
some censoriously, but all in the same conviction.

"It's plain to be seen what ails Mr. Alford, _now_."

"Well, I guess it _is_."

"_I_ guess so."

"I _guess_ it is."

"Seems kind of heartless, her going and leaving him so."

"Like a sick kitten!"

"Well, I should say as _much_."

"Your eyes bother you, Mr. Alford?" one of them chanted, breaking from