nding on the floor and leaning against the
wall.

Half the canvases had been turned, and then I came upon what I
sought.

I stood petrified. But I heard Wilderspin's voice at my side say, 'Do
not let an imaginary scene distress you, Mr. Aylwin. The picture
merely represents the scene in Coleridge's poem where the Lady
Christabel, having secretly and in pity brought to her room to share
her bed the mysterious lady she had met in the forest at midnight,
watches the beautiful witch undress, and is spell-bound and struck
dumb by some "sight to dream of, not to tell," which she sees at the
lady's bosom.'

* * * * *

Christabel! It was Winifred sitting there upright in bed, confronted
by a female figure--a tall lady, who with bowed head was undressing
herself beneath a lamp suspended from the ceiling. Christabel! It was
Winifred gazing at this figure--gazing as though fascinated; her dark
hair falling and tumbling down her neck, till it was at last partly
lost between her shining bosom and her nightdress. Yes, and in her
blue eyes there was the same concentration of light, there was the
same uprolling of the lips, there was the same dreadful gleaming of
the teeth, the same swollen veins about the throat that I had seen in
Wales. No wonder that at first I could see only the face and figure
of Winifred. My consciousness had again dwindled to a single point.
In a few seconds, however, I perceived that the scene was an antique
oak-panelled chamber, corniced with large and curiously-carven
figures, upon which played the warm light from a silver lamp
suspended from the middle of the ceiling by a twofold silver chain
fastened to the feet of an angel, quaintly carved in the dark wood of
the ceiling. It was beneath this lamp that stood the majestic figure
of the beautiful stranger, the Lady Geraldine. As she bent her head
to look at her bosom, which she was about fully to uncover, the
lamp-light gleaming among the gems and flashing in her hair and down
her loosened white silken robe to her naked feet, shining,
blue-veined and half-hidden in the green rushes that covered the
floor, she seemed to be herself the source from which the lurid light
was shed about the room. But her eyes were brighter than all. They
were more dreadful by far to look at than Winifred's own--they were
rolling wildly as if in an agony of hate, while she was drawing in
her breath till that marble throat of hers seemed choking. It was not