expression of pain that was stamped on every feature that she
presently seemed in the state of happy indifference which comes with a
life exempt from care. Whether it were that the habit of living in
this house to which infirmities confined her enabled her to perceive
certain natural effects that are imperceptible to the senses of
others, but which persons under the influence of excessive feeling are
keen to discover, or whether Nature, in compensation for her physical
defects, had given her more delicate sensations than better organized
beings,--it is certain that this woman had heard the steps of a man in
a gallery built above the kitchens and the servants' hall, by which
the front house communicated with the "back-quarter." The steps grew
more distinct. Soon, without possessing the power of this ardent
creature to abolish space and meet her other self, even a stranger
would have heard the foot-fall of a man upon the staircase which led
down from the gallery to the parlor.

The sound of that step would have startled the most heedless being
into thought; it was impossible to hear it coolly. A precipitate,
headlong step produces fear. When a man springs forward and cries,
"Fire!" his feet speak as loudly as his voice. If this be so, then a
contrary gait ought not to cause less powerful emotion. The slow
approach, the dragging step of the coming man might have irritated an
unreflecting spectator; but an observer, or a nervous person, would
undoubtedly have felt something akin to terror at the measured tread
of feet that seemed devoid of life, and under which the stairs creaked
loudly, as though two iron weights were striking them alternately. The
mind recognized at once either the heavy, undecided step of an old man
or the majestic tread of a great thinker bearing the worlds with him.

When the man had reached the lowest stair, and had planted both feet