Shadows of the Past
“Memory, the warder of the brain.”
It was long past midnight. The fire in the grate burned dimly, shedding its lingering glow on the face of the master of the house as with bowed head and folded hands he sat alone and brooding before its dying embers.
It was a lonesome sight. The very magnificence of the spacious apartment with its lofty walls and glittering works of art, seemed to give an air of remoteness to that solitary form, bending beneath the weight of its reflections. From the exquisitely decorated ceiling to the turkish rugs scattered over the polished floor, all was elegant and luxurious, and what had splendors like these to do with thoughts that bent the brows and overshadowed the lips of man? The very lights burned deprecatingly, illuminating beauties upon which no eye gazed and for which no heart beat. The master himself seemed to feel this, for he presently rose and put them out, after which he seated himself as before, only if possible with more abandon, as if with the extinguishing of the light some eye had been shut whose gaze he had hitherto feared. And in truth my lady’s image shone fainter from its heavy panel, and the smile which had met with unrelenting sweetness the glare of the surrounding splendor, softened in the mellow glimmer of the firelight to an etherial halo that left you at rest.
One, two , three , the small clock sounded from the mantel and yet no stir took place in the sombre figure keeping watch beneath. What were the thoughts which could thus detain from his comfortable bed a man already tired with manifold cares? It would be hard to tell. The waters