As people are always taciturn in the dark , not a word was said for some time after my entrance . Nothing broke the stillness but the regular click of the matron 's knitting-needles . At times the fire threw out a brief and dusky gleam which twinkled on the old man 's glasses and hovered doubtfully round our circle , but was far too faint to portray the individuals who composed it . Were we not like ghosts ? Dreamy as the scene was , might it not be a type of the mode in which departed people who had known and loved each other here would hold communion in eternity ? We were aware of each other 's presence , not by sight nor sound nor touch , but by an inward consciousness . Would it not be so among the dead ? The silence was interrupted by the consumptive daughter addressing a remark to some one in the circle whom she called Rachel . Her tremulous and decayed accents were answered by a single word , but in a voice that made me start and bend toward the spot whence it had proceeded . Had I ever heard that sweet , low tone ? If not , why did it rouse up so many old recollections , or mockeries of such , the shadows of things familiar yet unknown , and fill my mind with confused images of her features who had spoken , though buried in the gloom of the parlor ? Whom had my heart recognized , that it throbbed so ? I listened to catch her gentle breathing , and strove by the intensity of my gaze to picture forth a shape where none was visible . Suddenly the dry pine caught ; the fire blazed up with a ruddy glow , and where the darkness had been , there was she -- the vision of the fountain . A spirit of radiance only , she had vanished with the rainbow and appeared again in the firelight , perhaps to flicker with the blaze and be gone . Vet her cheek was rosy and lifelike , and her features , in the bright warmth of the room , were even sweeter and tenderer than my recollection of them . She knew me . The mirthful expression that had laughed in her eyes and dimpled over her countenance when I beheld her faint beauty in the fountain was laughing and dimpling there now . One moment our glance mingled ; the next , down rolled the heap of tan upon the kindled wood , and darkness snatched away that daughter of the light , and gave her back to me no more ! Fair ladies , there is nothing more to tell .
Must the simple mystery be revealed , then , that Rachel was the daughter XXXXX the village squire and had left home for a boarding-school the morning after I arrived and returned the day before my departure ?
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