The mistress of the house, and the governess of the house, had their own special reasons for retiring to their own rooms.

Carmina was in solitude as a matter of necessity.

The only friends that the poor girl could gather round her now, were the absent and the dead.
She had written to Ovid--merely for the pleasure of thinking that her letter would accompany him, in the mail-steamer which took him to Quebec.

She had written to Teresa.

She had opened her piano, and had played the divinely beautiful music of Mozart, until its tenderness saddened her, and she closed the instrument with an aching heart.