to me. Good-by, old friend, you have been well-behaved and listened with
considerable patience to a long discourse. It will benefit you about as
much as I have been benefited by many a lecture and many a sermon I was
compelled to listen to in the old vanished days."

Bestowing another caress on him I got up and went back to the house,
thinking sadly as I walked that the bright weather had not yet greatly
improved my spirits.






Chapter 20

Arrived at the house I was again disappointed at not seeing Yoletta; yet
without reasonable cause, since it was scarcely past midday, and she
came out from attending on her mother only at long intervals--in the
morning, and again just before evening--to taste the freshness of nature
for a few minutes.

The music-room was deserted when I went there; but it was made warm and
pleasant by the sun shining brightly in at the doors opening to the
south. I went on to the extreme end of the room, remembering now that I
had seen some volumes there when I had no time or inclination to look at
them, and I wanted something to read; for although I found reading very
irksome at this period, there was really little else I could do. I found
the books--three volumes--in the lower part of an alcove in the wall;
above them, within a niche in the alcove, on a level with my face as I