We have many arrangements to make in order to receive our guests becomingly." Lenora obeyed her father in silence, and followed him slowly, while the tears still dropped from her beautiful eyes.
Some hours afterward Monsieur De Vlierbeck might have been seen seated in the principal saloon of Grinselhof, near a little lamp, with his elbows on the table.

The apartment was dark and dreary, for the feeble rushlight illuminated but a single spot and cast the distant and lofty ceiling into vague obscurity.

The flickering flame threw long and sombre shadows over the wall, while a line of old portraits in the panels seemed to fix their stern and immovable eyes on the table.

Amid the gloom nothing came out with distinctness but the calm and noble face of the poor old gentleman, who sat there, absorbed in his reflections, fixed as a statue.
At length, rising from his chair and cautiously walking on tiptoe to the end of the room, he stopped and listened at the closed door.

"She sleeps," said he, in a low voice; and, raising his eyes to heaven, added, with a sigh, "may God protect her rest!" Then, returning to the table, he took the lamp, and, opening a large safe which was imbedded in the wall, he went down on his knees and drew forth some napkins and a table-cloth, which he unfolded carefully to see whether they were torn or stained.