d was matched by an equally strange
condition of my body. A mysterious trembling shuddered over me faintly
from head to foot. I walked without feeling the ground as I trod on it;
I looked about me with no distinct consciousness of what the objects
were on which my eyes rested. My hands were cold--and yet I hardly felt
it. My head throbbed hotly--and yet I was not sensible of any pain. It
seemed as if I were surrounded and enwrapped in some electric atmosphere
which altered all the ordinary conditions of sensation. I looked up
at the clear, calm sky, and wondered if a thunderstorm was coming. I
stopped, and buttoned my coat round me, and questioned myself if I had
caught a cold, or if I was going to have a fever. The sun sank below the
moorland horizon; the gray twilight trembled over the dark waters of the
lake. I went back to the house; and the vivid memory of Mrs. Van Brandt,
still in close companionship, went back with me.

The fire in my room had burned low in my absence. One of the closed
curtains had been drawn back a few inches, so as to admit through the
window a ray of the dying light. On the boundary limit where the light
was crossed by the obscurity which filled the rest of the room, I saw
Miss Dunross seated, with her veil drawn and her writing-case on her
knee, waiting my return.

I hastened to make my excuses. I assured her that I had been careful to
tell the servant where to find me. She gently checked me before I could
say more.

"It's not Peter's fault," she said. "I told him not to hurry your return
to the house. Have you enjoyed your walk?"

She spoke very quietly. The faint, sad voice was fainter and sadder than
ever. She kept her head bent over her writing-case, instead of turning
it toward me as usual while we were talking. I still felt the mysterious
trembling which had oppressed me in the garden. Drawing a chair near
the fire, I stirred the embers together, and tried to warm myself. Our
positions in the room left some little distance between us. I could only
see her sidewise, as she sat by the window in the sheltering darkness of
the curtain which still remained drawn.

"I think I have been too long in the garden," I said. "I feel chilled by
the cold evening air."

"Will you have some more wood put on the fire?" she asked. "Can I get
you anything?"

"No, thank you. I shall do very well here. I see you are kindly ready to
write for me."

"Yes," she said, "at your own convenience. When yo