When Mrs. Fairfax had bidden me a kind good-night, and I hadfastened my door, gazed leisurely round, and in some measure effacedthe eerie impression made by that wide hall, that dark and spaciousstaircase, and that long, cold gallery, by the livelier aspect of mylittle room, I remembered that, after a day of bodily fatigue andmental anxiety, I was now at last in safe haven. The impulse ofgratitude swelled my heart, and I knelt down at the bedside, andoffered up thanks where thanks were due; not forgetting, ere I rose,to implore aid on my further path, and the power of meriting thekindness which seemed so frankly offered me before it was earned. Mycouch had no thorns in it that night; my solitary room no fears. Atonce weary and content, I slept soon and soundly: when I awoke itwas broad day.