he black gap before me
the oldest man I had ever come upon in my whole life. He was so old
I was astonished when his drawn lips opened and he asked if I was the
lawyer from New York. I would as soon have expected a mummy to wag its
tongue and utter English, he looked so thin and dried and removed from
this life and all worldly concerns.

But when I had answered his question and he had turned to marshal me
down the hall towards a door I could dimly see standing open in the
twilight of an absolutely sunless interior, I noticed that his step was
not without some vigour, despite the feeble bend of his withered body
and the incessant swaying of his head, which seemed to be continually
saying No!

"I will prepare madam," he admonished me, after drawing a ponderous
curtain two inches or less aside from one of the windows. "She is very
ill, but she will see you."

The tone was senile, but it was the senility of an educated man, and as
the cultivated accents wavered forth, my mind changed in, regard to the
position he held in the house. Interested anew, I sought to give him
another look, but he had already vanished through the doorway, and
so noiselessly, it was more like a shadow's flitting than a man's
withdrawal.

The darkness in which I sat was absolute; but gradually, as I continued
to look about me, the spaces lightened and certain details came out,
which to my astonishment were of a character to show that the plain if
substantial exterior of this house with its choked-up approaches and
weedy gardens was no sample of what was to be found inside. Though the
walls surrounding me were dismal because unlighted, they betrayed a
splendour unusual in any country house. The frescoes and paintings were
of an ancient order, dating from days when life and not death reigned in
this isolated dwelling; but in them high art reigned supreme, an art
so high and so finished that only great wealth, combined with the most
cultivated taste, could have produced such effects. I was still absorbed
in the wonder of it all, when the quiet voice of the old gentleman who
had let me in reached me again from the doorway, and I heard:

"Madam is ready for you. May I trouble you to accompany me to her room."

I rose with alacrity. I was anxious to see madam, if only to satisfy
myself that she was as interesting as the house in which she was
self-immured.

I found her a great deal more so. But before I enter upon our interview,
let me mention a f