Chapter LXXVIII

Another Christmas Eve arrives, with snow and calm frosty weather. Though, as of old, they had games, and _tableaux vivants_, and dance, and song, and "hoodman blind"[53]--blindman's bluff--yet in spite of these recreations,

"over all things brooding slept
The quiet sense of something lost."

There were no visible signs of distress--no tears or outward mourning. Could regret then have died out?

"No--mixt with all this mystic frame,
Her deep relations are the same,
But with long use her tears are dry."