Chapter: WHEN Phoebe awoke,--which she did with the early twittering of the
conjugal couple of robins in the pear-tree,--she heard movements below
stairs, and, hastening down, found Hepzibah already in the kitchen.
She stood by a window, holding a book in close contiguity to her nose,
    as if with the hope of gaining an olfactory acquaintance with its
    contents, since her imperfect vision made it not very easy to read
    them.  If any volume could have manifested its essential wisdom in the
    mode suggested, it would certainly have been the one now in Hepzibah's
    hand; and the kitchen, in such an event, would forthwith have streamed
    with the fragrance of venison, turkeys, capons, larded partridges,
    puddings, cakes, and Christmas pies, in all manner of elaborate mixture
    and concoction.  It was a cookery book, full of innumerable old
    fashions of English dishes, and illustrated with engravings, which
    represented the arrangements of the table at such banquets as it might
    have befitted a nobleman to give in the great hall of his castle.  And,
    amid these rich and potent devices of the culinary art (not one of
            which, probably, had been tested, within the memory of any man's
            grandfather), poor Hepzibah was seeking for some nimble little titbit,
    which, with what skill she had, and such materials as were at hand, she
    might toss up for breakfast.

    Soon, with a deep sigh, she put aside the savory volume, and inquired
    of Phoebe whether old Speckle, as she called one of the hens, had laid
    an egg the preceding day.  Phoebe ran to see, but returned without the
    expected treasure in her hand.  At that instant, however, the blast of
    a fish-dealer's conch was heard, announcing his approach along the
    street.  With energetic raps at the shop-window, Hepzibah summoned the
    man in, and made purchase of what he warranted as the finest mackerel
    in his cart, and as fat a one as ever he felt with his finger so early
    in the season.  Requesting Phoebe to roast some coffee,--which she
    casually observed was the real Mocha, and so long kept that each of the
    small berries ought to be worth its weight in gold,--the maiden lady
    heaped fuel into the vast receptacle of the ancient fireplace in such
    quantity as soon to drive the lingering dusk out of the kitchen.  The
    country-girl, willing to give her utmost assistance, proposed to make
    an Indian cake, after her mother's peculiar method, of easy
    manufacture, and which she could vouch for as possessing a richness,
    and, if rightly prepared, a delicacy, unequalled by any other mode of
    breakfast-cake.  Hepzibah gladly assenting, the kitchen was soon the
    scene of savory preparation.  Perchance, amid their proper element of
    smoke, which eddied forth from the ill-constructed chimney, the ghosts
    of departed cook-maids looked wonderingly on, or peeped down the great
    breadth of the flue, despising the simplicity of the projected meal,
    yet ineffectually pining to thrust their shadowy hands into each
    inchoate dish.  The half-starved rats, at any rate, stole visibly out
    of their hiding-places, and sat on their hind-legs, snuffing the fumy
    atmosphere, and wistfully awaiting an opportunity to nibble.

    Hepzibah had no natural turn for cookery, and, to say the truth, had
    fairly incurred her present meagreness by often choosing to go without
    her dinner rather than be attendant on the rotation of the spit, or
    ebullition of the pot.  Her zeal over the fire, therefore, was quite an
    heroic test of sentiment.  It was touching, and positively worthy of
    tears (if Phoebe, the only spectator, except the rats and ghosts
            aforesaid, had not been better employed than in shedding them), to see
    her rake out a bed of fresh and glowing coals, and proceed to broil the
    mackerel.  Her usually pale cheeks were all ablaze with heat and hurry.
    She watched the fish with as much tender care and minuteness of
    attention as if,--we know not how to express it otherwise,--as if her
    own heart were on the gridiron, and her immortal happiness were
    involved in its being done precisely to a turn!

    Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly arranged
    and well-provisioned breakfast-table.  We come to it freshly, in the
    dewy youth of the day, and when our spiritual and sensual elements are
    in better accord than at a later period; so that the material delights
    of the morning meal are capable of being fully enjoyed, without any
    very grievous reproaches, whether gastric or conscientious, for
    yielding even a trifle overmuch to the animal department of our nature.
    The thoughts, too, that run around the ring of familiar guests have a
    piquancy and mirthfulness, and oftentimes a vivid truth, which more
    rarely find their way into the elaborate intercourse of dinner.
    Hepzibah's small and ancient table, supported on its slender and
    graceful legs, and covered with a cloth of the richest damask, looked
    worthy to be the scene and centre of one of the cheerfullest of
    parties.  The vapor of the broiled fish arose like incense from the
    shrine of a barbarian idol, while the fragrance of the Mocha might have
    gratified the nostrils of a tutelary Lar, or whatever power has scope
    over a modern breakfast-table.  Phoebe's Indian cakes were the sweetest
    offering of all,--in their hue befitting the rustic altars of the
    innocent and golden age,--or, so brightly yellow were they, resembling
    some of the bread which was changed to glistening gold when Midas tried
    to eat it.  The butter must not be forgotten,--butter which Phoebe
    herself had churned, in her own rural home, and brought it to her
    cousin as a propitiatory gift,--smelling of clover-blossoms, and
    diffusing the charm of pastoral scenery through the dark-panelled
    parlor.  All this, with the quaint gorgeousness of the old china cups
    and saucers, and the crested spoons, and a silver cream-jug (Hepzibah's
            only other article of plate, and shaped like the rudest porringer), set
    out a board at which the stateliest of old Colonel Pyncheon's guests
    need not have scorned to take his place.  But the Puritan's face
    scowled down out of the picture, as if nothing on the table pleased his
    appetite.

    By way of contributing what grace she could, Phoebe gathered some roses
    and a few other flowers, possessing either scent or beauty, and
    arranged them in a glass pitcher, which, having long ago lost its
    handle, was so much the fitter for a flower-vase.  The early
    sunshine--as fresh as that which peeped into Eve's bower while she and
    Adam sat at breakfast there--came twinkling through the branches of the
    pear-tree, and fell quite across the table.  All was now ready.  There
    were chairs and plates for three.  A chair and plate for Hepzibah,--the
    same for Phoebe,--but what other guest did her cousin look for?

    Throughout this preparation there had been a constant tremor in
    Hepzibah's frame; an agitation so powerful that Phoebe could see the
    quivering of her gaunt shadow, as thrown by the firelight on the
    kitchen wall, or by the sunshine on the parlor floor.  Its
    manifestations were so various, and agreed so little with one another,
    that the girl knew not what to make of it.  Sometimes it seemed an
    ecstasy of delight and happiness.  At such moments, Hepzibah would
    fling out her arms, and infold Phoebe in them, and kiss her cheek as
    tenderly as ever her mother had; she appeared to do so by an inevitable
    impulse, and as if her bosom were oppressed with tenderness, of which
    she must needs pour out a little, in order to gain breathing-room.  The
    next moment, without any visible cause for the change, her unwonted joy
    shrank back, appalled, as it were, and clothed itself in mourning; or
    it ran and hid itself, so to speak, in the dungeon of her heart, where
    it had long lain chained, while a cold, spectral sorrow took the place
    of the imprisoned joy, that was afraid to be enfranchised,--a sorrow as
    black as that was bright.  She often broke into a little, nervous,
    hysteric laugh, more touching than any tears could be; and forthwith,
    as if to try which was the most touching, a gush of tears would follow;
or perhaps the laughter and tears came both at once, and surrounded our
poor Hepzibah, in a moral sense, with a kind of pale, dim rainbow.
Towards Phoebe, as we have said, she was affectionate,--far tenderer
than ever before, in their brief acquaintance, except for that one kiss
on the preceding night,--yet with a continually recurring pettishness
and irritability.  She would speak sharply to her; then, throwing aside
all the starched reserve of her ordinary manner, ask pardon, and the
next instant renew the just-forgiven injury.

At last, when their mutual labor was all finished, she took Phoebe's
hand in her own trembling one.

"Bear with me, my dear child," she cried; "for truly my heart is full
to the brim! Bear with me; for I love you, Phoebe, though I speak so
roughly.  Think nothing of it, dearest child! By and by, I shall be
kind, and only kind!"

"My dearest cousin, cannot you tell me what has happened?" asked
Phoebe, with a sunny and tearful sympathy.  "What is it that moves you
so?"

"Hush! hush! He is coming!" whispered Hepzibah, hastily wiping her
eyes. "Let him see you first, Phoebe; for you are young and rosy, and
cannot help letting a smile break out whether or no.  He always liked
bright faces! And mine is old now, and the tears are hardly dry on it.
He never could abide tears.  There; draw the curtain a little, so that
the shadow may fall across his side of the table! But let there be a
good deal of sunshine, too; for he never was fond of gloom, as some
people are.  He has had but little sunshine in his life,--poor
Clifford,--and, oh, what a black shadow.  Poor, poor Clifford!"

Thus murmuring in an undertone, as if speaking rather to her own heart
than to Phoebe, the old gentlewoman stepped on tiptoe about the room,
     making such arrangements as suggested themselves at the crisis.

     Meanwhile there was a step in the passage-way, above stairs.  Phoebe
     recognized it as the same which had passed upward, as through her
     dream, in the night-time.  The approaching guest, whoever it might be,
     appeared to pause at the head of the staircase; he paused twice or
     thrice in the descent; he paused again at the foot.  Each time, the
     delay seemed to be without purpose, but rather from a forgetfulness of
     the purpose which had set him in motion, or as if the person's feet
     came involuntarily to a stand-still because the motive-power was too
     feeble to sustain his progress.  Finally, he made a long pause at the
     threshold of the parlor.  He took hold of the knob of the door; then
     loosened his grasp without opening it.  Hepzibah, her hands
     convulsively clasped, stood gazing at the entrance.

     "Dear Cousin Hepzibah, pray don't look so!" said Phoebe, trembling; for
     her cousin's emotion, and this mysteriously reluctant step, made her
     feel as if a ghost were coming into the room.  "You really frighten me!
     Is something awful going to happen?"

     "Hush!" whispered Hepzibah.  "Be cheerful! whatever may happen, be
     nothing but cheerful!"

     The final pause at the threshold proved so long, that Hepzibah, unable
     to endure the suspense, rushed forward, threw open the door, and led in
     the stranger by the hand.  At the first glance, Phoebe saw an elderly
     personage, in an old-fashioned dressing-gown of faded damask, and
     wearing his gray or almost white hair of an unusual length.  It quite
     overshadowed his forehead, except when he thrust it back, and stared
     vaguely about the room.  After a very brief inspection of his face, it
     was easy to conceive that his footstep must necessarily be such an one
     as that which, slowly and with as indefinite an aim as a child's first
     journey across a floor, had just brought him hitherward.  Yet there
     were no tokens that his physical strength might not have sufficed for a
     free and determined gait.  It was the spirit of the man that could not
     walk.  The expression of his countenance--while, notwithstanding it had
     the light of reason in it--seemed to waver, and glimmer, and nearly to
     die away, and feebly to recover itself again.  It was like a flame
     which we see twinkling among half-extinguished embers; we gaze at it
     more intently than if it were a positive blaze, gushing vividly
     upward,--more intently, but with a certain impatience, as if it ought
     either to kindle itself into satisfactory splendor, or be at once
     extinguished.

     For an instant after entering the room, the guest stood still,
     retaining Hepzibah's hand instinctively, as a child does that of the
     grown person who guides it.  He saw Phoebe, however, and caught an
     illumination from her youthful and pleasant aspect, which, indeed,
     threw a cheerfulness about the parlor, like the circle of reflected
     brilliancy around the glass vase of flowers that was standing in the
     sunshine.  He made a salutation, or, to speak nearer the truth, an
     ill-defined, abortive attempt at curtsy.  Imperfect as it was, however,
     it conveyed an idea, or, at least, gave a hint, of indescribable grace,
     such as no practised art of external manners could have attained.  It
     was too slight to seize upon at the instant; yet, as recollected
     afterwards, seemed to transfigure the whole man.

     "Dear Clifford," said Hepzibah, in the tone with which one soothes a
     wayward infant, "this is our cousin Phoebe,--little Phoebe
     Pyncheon,--Arthur's only child, you know.  She has come from the
     country to stay with us awhile; for our old house has grown to be very
     lonely now."

     "Phoebe--Phoebe Pyncheon?--Phoebe?" repeated the guest, with a strange,
     sluggish, ill-defined utterance.  "Arthur's child! Ah, I forget! No
     matter.  She is very welcome!"

     "Come, dear Clifford, take this chair," said Hepzibah, leading him to
     his place.  "Pray, Phoebe, lower the curtain a very little more.  Now
     let us begin breakfast."

     The guest seated himself in the place assigned him, and looked
     strangely around.  He was evidently trying to grapple with the present
     scene, and bring it home to his mind with a more satisfactory
     distinctness.  He desired to be certain, at least, that he was here, in
     the low-studded, cross-beamed, oaken-panelled parlor, and not in some
     other spot, which had stereotyped itself into his senses.  But the
     effort was too great to be sustained with more than a fragmentary
     success.  Continually, as we may express it, he faded away out of his
     place; or, in other words, his mind and consciousness took their
     departure, leaving his wasted, gray, and melancholy figure--a
     substantial emptiness, a material ghost--to occupy his seat at table.
     Again, after a blank moment, there would be a flickering taper-gleam in
     his eyeballs.  It betokened that his spiritual part had returned, and
     was doing its best to kindle the heart's household fire, and light up
     intellectual lamps in the dark and ruinous mansion, where it was doomed
     to be a forlorn inhabitant.

     At one of these moments of less torpid, yet still imperfect animation,
     Phoebe became convinced of what she had at first rejected as too
     extravagant and startling an idea.  She saw that the person before her
     must have been the original of the beautiful miniature in her cousin
     Hepzibah's possession.  Indeed, with a feminine eye for costume, she
     had at once identified the damask dressing-gown, which enveloped him,
     as the same in figure, material, and fashion, with that so elaborately
     represented in the picture.  This old, faded garment, with all its
     pristine brilliancy extinct, seemed, in some indescribable way, to
     translate the wearer's untold misfortune, and make it perceptible to
     the beholder's eye.  It was the better to be discerned, by this
     exterior type, how worn and old were the soul's more immediate
     garments; that form and countenance, the beauty and grace of which had
     almost transcended the skill of the most exquisite of artists.  It
     could the more adequately be known that the soul of the man must have
     suffered some miserable wrong, from its earthly experience.  There he
     seemed to sit, with a dim veil of decay and ruin betwixt him and the
     world, but through which, at flitting intervals, might be caught the
     same expression, so refined, so softly imaginative, which
     Malbone--venturing a happy touch, with suspended breath--had imparted
     to the miniature! There had been something so innately characteristic
     in this look, that all the dusky years, and the burden of unfit
     calamity which had fallen upon him, did not suffice utterly to destroy
     it.

     Hepzibah had now poured out a cup of deliciously fragrant coffee, and
     presented it to her guest.  As his eyes met hers, he seemed bewildered
     and disquieted.

     "Is this you, Hepzibah?" he murmured sadly; then, more apart, and
     perhaps unconscious that he was overheard, "How changed!  how changed!
     And is she angry with me? Why does she bend her brow so?"

     Poor Hepzibah! It was that wretched scowl which time and her
     near-sightedness, and the fret of inward discomfort, had rendered so
     habitual that any vehemence of mood invariably evoked it.  But at the
     indistinct murmur of his words her whole face grew tender, and even
     lovely, with sorrowful affection; the harshness of her features
     disappeared, as it were, behind the warm and misty glow.

     "Angry!" she repeated; "angry with you, Clifford!"

     Her tone, as she uttered the exclamation, had a plaintive and really
     exquisite melody thrilling through it, yet without subduing a certain
     something which an obtuse auditor might still have mistaken for
     asperity. It was as if some transcendent musician should draw a
     soul-thrilling sweetness out of a cracked instrument, which makes its
     physical imperfection heard in the midst of ethereal harmony,--so deep
     was the sensibility that found an organ in Hepzibah's voice!

     "There is nothing but love here, Clifford," she added,--"nothing but
     love! You are at home!"

     The guest responded to her tone by a smile, which did not half light up
     his face.  Feeble as it was, however, and gone in a moment, it had a
     charm of wonderful beauty.  It was followed by a coarser expression; or
     one that had the effect of coarseness on the fine mould and outline of
     his countenance, because there was nothing intellectual to temper it.
     It was a look of appetite.  He ate food with what might almost be
     termed voracity; and seemed to forget himself, Hepzibah, the young
     girl, and everything else around him, in the sensual enjoyment which
     the bountifully spread table afforded.  In his natural system, though
     high-wrought and delicately refined, a sensibility to the delights of
     the palate was probably inherent.  It would have been kept in check,
     however, and even converted into an accomplishment, and one of the
     thousand modes of intellectual culture, had his more ethereal
     characteristics retained their vigor.  But as it existed now, the
     effect was painful and made Phoebe droop her eyes.

     In a little while the guest became sensible of the fragrance of the yet
     untasted coffee.  He quaffed it eagerly.  The subtle essence acted on
     him like a charmed draught, and caused the opaque substance of his
     animal being to grow transparent, or, at least, translucent; so that a
     spiritual gleam was transmitted through it, with a clearer lustre than
     hitherto.

     "More, more!" he cried, with nervous haste in his utterance, as if
     anxious to retain his grasp of what sought to escape him.  "This is
     what I need! Give me more!"

     Under this delicate and powerful influence he sat more erect, and
     looked out from his eyes with a glance that took note of what it rested
     on.  It was not so much that his expression grew more intellectual;
     this, though it had its share, was not the most peculiar effect.
     Neither was what we call the moral nature so forcibly awakened as to
     present itself in remarkable prominence.  But a certain fine temper of
     being was now not brought out in full relief, but changeably and
     imperfectly betrayed, of which it was the function to deal with all
     beautiful and enjoyable things.  In a character where it should exist
     as the chief attribute, it would bestow on its possessor an exquisite
     taste, and an enviable susceptibility of happiness.  Beauty would be
     his life; his aspirations would all tend toward it; and, allowing his
     frame and physical organs to be in consonance, his own developments
     would likewise be beautiful.  Such a man should have nothing to do with
     sorrow; nothing with strife; nothing with the martyrdom which, in an
     infinite variety of shapes, awaits those who have the heart, and will,
     and conscience, to fight a battle with the world.  To these heroic
     tempers, such martyrdom is the richest meed in the world's gift.  To
     the individual before us, it could only be a grief, intense in due
     proportion with the severity of the infliction.  He had no right to be
     a martyr; and, beholding him so fit to be happy and so feeble for all
     other purposes, a generous, strong, and noble spirit would, methinks,
     have been ready to sacrifice what little enjoyment it might have
     planned for itself,--it would have flung down the hopes, so paltry in
     its regard,--if thereby the wintry blasts of our rude sphere might come
     tempered to such a man.

     Not to speak it harshly or scornfully, it seemed Clifford's nature to
     be a Sybarite.  It was perceptible, even there, in the dark old parlor,
     in the inevitable polarity with which his eyes were attracted towards
     the quivering play of sunbeams through the shadowy foliage.  It was
     seen in his appreciating notice of the vase of flowers, the scent of
     which he inhaled with a zest almost peculiar to a physical organization
     so refined that spiritual ingredients are moulded in with it.  It was
     betrayed in the unconscious smile with which he regarded Phoebe, whose
     fresh and maidenly figure was both sunshine and flowers,--their
     essence, in a prettier and more agreeable mode of manifestation.  Not
     less evident was this love and necessity for the Beautiful, in the
     instinctive caution with which, even so soon, his eyes turned away from
     his hostess, and wandered to any quarter rather than come back.  It was
     Hepzibah's misfortune,--not Clifford's fault.  How could he,--so yellow
     as she was, so wrinkled, so sad of mien, with that odd uncouthness of a
     turban on her head, and that most perverse of scowls contorting her
     brow,--how could he love to gaze at her? But, did he owe her no
     affection for so much as she had silently given? He owed her nothing.
     A nature like Clifford's can contract no debts of that kind.  It is--we
     say it without censure, nor in diminution of the claim which it
     indefeasibly possesses on beings of another mould--it is always selfish
     in its essence; and we must give it leave to be so, and heap up our
     heroic and disinterested love upon it so much the more, without a
     recompense.  Poor Hepzibah knew this truth, or, at least, acted on the
     instinct of it.  So long estranged from what was lovely as Clifford had
     been, she rejoiced--rejoiced, though with a present sigh, and a secret
     purpose to shed tears in her own chamber that he had brighter objects
     now before his eyes than her aged and uncomely features.  They never
     possessed a charm; and if they had, the canker of her grief for him
     would long since have destroyed it.

     The guest leaned back in his chair.  Mingled in his countenance with a
     dreamy delight, there was a troubled look of effort and unrest.  He was
     seeking to make himself more fully sensible of the scene around him;
     or, perhaps, dreading it to be a dream, or a play of imagination, was
     vexing the fair moment with a struggle for some added brilliancy and
     more durable illusion.

     "How pleasant!--How delightful!" he murmured, but not as if addressing
     any one.  "Will it last? How balmy the atmosphere through that open
     window! An open window! How beautiful that play of sunshine! Those
     flowers, how very fragrant! That young girl's face, how cheerful, how
     blooming!--a flower with the dew on it, and sunbeams in the dew-drops!
     Ah! this must be all a dream!  A dream! A dream! But it has quite
     hidden the four stone walls!"

     Then his face darkened, as if the shadow of a cavern or a dungeon had
     come over it; there was no more light in its expression than might have
     come through the iron grates of a prison-window--still lessening, too,
     as if he were sinking farther into the depths.  Phoebe (being of that
             quickness and activity of temperament that she seldom long refrained
             from taking a part, and generally a good one, in what was going
             forward) now felt herself moved to address the stranger.

     "Here is a new kind of rose, which I found this morning in the garden,"
     said she, choosing a small crimson one from among the flowers in the
     vase.  "There will be but five or six on the bush this season.  This is
     the most perfect of them all; not a speck of blight or mildew in it.
     And how sweet it is!--sweet like no other rose! One can never forget
     that scent!"

     "Ah!--let me see!--let me hold it!" cried the guest, eagerly seizing
     the flower, which, by the spell peculiar to remembered odors, brought
     innumerable associations along with the fragrance that it exhaled.
     "Thank you! This has done me good.  I remember how I used to prize this
     flower,--long ago, I suppose, very long ago!--or was it only yesterday?
     It makes me feel young again!  Am I young? Either this remembrance is
     singularly distinct, or this consciousness strangely dim! But how kind
     of the fair young girl! Thank you! Thank you!"

     The favorable excitement derived from this little crimson rose afforded
     Clifford the brightest moment which he enjoyed at the breakfast-table.
     It might have lasted longer, but that his eyes happened, soon
     afterwards, to rest on the face of the old Puritan, who, out of his
     dingy frame and lustreless canvas, was looking down on the scene like a
     ghost, and a most ill-tempered and ungenial one.  The guest made an
     impatient gesture of the hand, and addressed Hepzibah with what might
     easily be recognized as the licensed irritability of a petted member of
     the family.

     "Hepzibah!--Hepzibah!" cried he with no little force and distinctness,
     "why do you keep that odious picture on the wall?  Yes, yes!--that is
     precisely your taste! I have told you, a thousand times, that it was
     the evil genius of the house!--my evil genius particularly! Take it
     down, at once!"

     "Dear Clifford," said Hepzibah sadly, "you know it cannot be!"

     "Then, at all events," continued he, still speaking with some energy,
     "pray cover it with a crimson curtain, broad enough to hang in folds,
     and with a golden border and tassels.  I cannot bear it! It must not
     stare me in the face!"

     "Yes, dear Clifford, the picture shall be covered," said Hepzibah
     soothingly.  "There is a crimson curtain in a trunk above stairs,--a
     little faded and moth-eaten, I'm afraid,--but Phoebe and I will do
     wonders with it."

     "This very day, remember" said he; and then added, in a low,
     self-communing voice, "Why should we live in this dismal house at all?
     Why not go to the South of France?--to Italy?--Paris, Naples, Venice,
     Rome? Hepzibah will say we have not the means.  A droll idea that!"

     He smiled to himself, and threw a glance of fine sarcastic meaning
     towards Hepzibah.

     But the several moods of feeling, faintly as they were marked, through
     which he had passed, occurring in so brief an interval of time, had
     evidently wearied the stranger.  He was probably accustomed to a sad
     monotony of life, not so much flowing in a stream, however sluggish, as
     stagnating in a pool around his feet.  A slumberous veil diffused
     itself over his countenance, and had an effect, morally speaking, on
     its naturally delicate and elegant outline, like that which a brooding
     mist, with no sunshine in it, throws over the features of a landscape.
     He appeared to become grosser,--almost cloddish.  If aught of interest
     or beauty--even ruined beauty--had heretofore been visible in this man,
     the beholder might now begin to doubt it, and to accuse his own
     imagination of deluding him with whatever grace had flickered over that
     visage, and whatever exquisite lustre had gleamed in those filmy eyes.

     Before he had quite sunken away, however, the sharp and peevish tinkle
     of the shop-bell made itself audible.  Striking most disagreeably on
     Clifford's auditory organs and the characteristic sensibility of his
     nerves, it caused him to start upright out of his chair.

     "Good heavens, Hepzibah! what horrible disturbance have we now in the
     house?" cried he, wreaking his resentful impatience--as a matter of
     course, and a custom of old--on the one person in the world that loved
     him.  "I have never heard such a hateful clamor! Why do you permit it?
     In the name of all dissonance, what can it be?"

     It was very remarkable into what prominent relief--even as if a dim
     picture should leap suddenly from its canvas--Clifford's character was
     thrown by this apparently trifling annoyance.  The secret was, that an
     individual of his temper can always be pricked more acutely through his
     sense of the beautiful and harmonious than through his heart.  It is
     even possible--for similar cases have often happened--that if Clifford,
     in his foregoing life, had enjoyed the means of cultivating his taste
     to its utmost perfectibility, that subtile attribute might, before this
     period, have completely eaten out or filed away his affections.  Shall
     we venture to pronounce, therefore, that his long and black calamity
     may not have had a redeeming drop of mercy at the bottom?

     "Dear Clifford, I wish I could keep the sound from your ears," said
     Hepzibah, patiently, but reddening with a painful suffusion of shame.
     "It is very disagreeable even to me.  But, do you know, Clifford, I
     have something to tell you? This ugly noise,--pray run, Phoebe, and see
     who is there!--this naughty little tinkle is nothing but our shop-bell!"

     "Shop-bell!" repeated Clifford, with a bewildered stare.

     "Yes, our shop-bell," said Hepzibah, a certain natural dignity, mingled
     with deep emotion, now asserting itself in her manner.  "For you must
     know, dearest Clifford, that we are very poor.  And there was no other
     resource, but either to accept assistance from a hand that I would push
     aside (and so would you!) were it to offer bread when we were dying for
     it,--no help, save from him, or else to earn our subsistence with my
     own hands! Alone, I might have been content to starve.  But you were to
     be given back to me! Do you think, then, dear Clifford," added she,
     with a wretched smile, "that I have brought an irretrievable disgrace
     on the old house, by opening a little shop in the front gable?  Our
     great-great-grandfather did the same, when there was far less need! Are
     you ashamed of me?"

     "Shame! Disgrace! Do you speak these words to me, Hepzibah?" said
     Clifford,--not angrily, however; for when a man's spirit has been
     thoroughly crushed, he may be peevish at small offences, but never
     resentful of great ones.  So he spoke with only a grieved emotion.  "It
     was not kind to say so, Hepzibah! What shame can befall me now?"

     And then the unnerved man--he that had been born for enjoyment, but had
     met a doom so very wretched--burst into a woman's passion of tears.  It
     was but of brief continuance, however; soon leaving him in a quiescent,
     and, to judge by his countenance, not an uncomfortable state.  From
     this mood, too, he partially rallied for an instant, and looked at
     Hepzibah with a smile, the keen, half-derisory purport of which was a
     puzzle to her.

     "Are we so very poor, Hepzibah?" said he.

     Finally, his chair being deep and softly cushioned, Clifford fell
     asleep.  Hearing the more regular rise and fall of his breath (which,
             however, even then, instead of being strong and full, had a feeble kind
             of tremor, corresponding with the lack of vigor in his
             character),--hearing these tokens of settled slumber, Hepzibah seized
     the opportunity to peruse his face more attentively than she had yet
     dared to do.  Her heart melted away in tears; her profoundest spirit
     sent forth a moaning voice, low, gentle, but inexpressibly sad.  In
     this depth of grief and pity she felt that there was no irreverence in
     gazing at his altered, aged, faded, ruined face.  But no sooner was she
     a little relieved than her conscience smote her for gazing curiously at
     him, now that he was so changed; and, turning hastily away, Hepzibah
     let down the curtain over the sunny window, and left Clifford to
     slumber there.

 Phoebe wakes up the next morning and walks downstairs. She finds Hepzibah looking at a cookbook. Hepzibah asks Phoebe to go look for an egg in the hen coop. Hepzibah begins cooking energetically. Phoebe, the rats, and the ghosts of the household are all surprised at this unusual activity. Phoebe gathers some flowers to put on the table. She is surprised to see that Hepzibah has set the table for three. Who is the third visitor? Throughout all of this preparation, Hepzibah has been trembling anxiously. Finally Hepzibah asks Phoebe to "bear with" her. Phoebe asks what's upsetting Hepzibah so much. Hepzibah hushes Phoebe because "He is coming!" . There is a step in the passageway. The approaching footsteps come slowly in fits and starts. Finally the footsteps hesitate at the threshold of the door. Hepzibah warns Phoebe: "Whatever may happen, be nothing but cheerful!" . Hepzibah jumps up and leads an elderly man into the room. This man has unusually long white hair and a broken face. He looks like he is capable of thinking and feeling, but only sometimes - otherwise, his mind seems to "waver, and glimmer" . Hepzibah introduces Phoebe to Clifford Pyncheon. Clifford keeps looking around the room as though he cannot believe that he is there. Finally Phoebe realizes that she is seeing the face of the man in Hepzibah's miniature portrait. She can see, now and again, the remnants of that sensitive spirit captured in the portrait. Clifford thinks that Hepzibah is angry with him. Poor Hepzibah's permanent scowl - the result of heavy eyebrows and nearsightedness - freaks him out. But Hepzibah feels nothing but love and pity for her brother. Clifford eats a lot very quickly. He also quaffs down a pot of coffee. Clifford is unable to believe that this pleasant life will last. Phoebe, noticing Clifford's pleasure in the beauties of the garden, quickly distracts him from dark thoughts by pointing out a new kind of rose. Clifford is excited and asks to hold the rose. After enjoying the beauty of the rose for a time, Clifford is distracted by the portrait of Colonel Pyncheon. He demands that Hepzibah take it down. She replies that it cannot be taken down. Clifford asks that she cover it with a red cloth. Clifford insists that "It must not stare in the face!" . Clifford slowly seems to be tiring: he's not used to so much excitement. When he hears the shop bell, he is horrified by the ugly noise. Hepzibah explains that she has had to open a shop. Hepzibah asks if Clifford is ashamed of her. Clifford asks Hepzibah how he could possibly be ashamed of her when he has just spent the last 30 years in jail. Clifford bursts in to tears before asking, with an odd smile, "Are we so very poor, Hepzibah?" . Clifford then falls asleep in his chair. Hepzibah feels filled with grief and pity at the sight.

