eatures, for the
one unanswerable reason that we can never feel sure how soon similar
temptations may not lead us to be guilty of the same frailties
ourselves. Looking back at the events of the night, I can recall but one
consideration that stayed my feet on the fatal path which led back
to the lake. I still doubted whether it would be possible for such a
swimmer as I was to drown himself. This was all that troubled my mind.
For the rest, my will was made, and I had few other affairs which
remained unsettled. No lingering hope was left in me of a reunion in the
future with Mrs. Van Brandt. She had never written to me again; I had
(forgiven) her for having forgotten me. My thoughts of her and of others
were the forbearing thoughts of a man whose mind was withdrawn already
from the world, whose views were narrowing fast to the one idea of his
own death.

I grew weary of walking up and down. The loneliness of the place began
to oppress me. The sense of my own indecision irritated my nerves.
After a long look at the lake through the trees, I came to a positive
conclusion at last. I determined to try if a good swimmer could drown
himself.

CHAPTER XXXIII. A VISION OF THE NIGHT.

RETURNING to the cottage parlor, I took a chair by the window and opened
my pocket-book at a blank page. I had certain directions to give to my
representatives, which might spare them some trouble and uncertainty
in the event of my death. Disguising my last instructions under the
commonplace heading of "Memoranda on my return to London," I began to
write.

I had filled one page of the pocket-book, and had just turned to the
next, when I became conscious of a difficulty in fixing my attention on
the subject that was before it. I was at once reminded of the similar
difficulty which I felt in Shetland, when I had tried vainly to arrange
the composition of the letter to my mother which Miss Dunross was to
write. By way of completing the parallel, my thoughts wandered now, as
they had wandered then, to my latest remembrance of Mrs. Van Brandt.
In a minute or two I began to feel once more the strange physical
sensations which I had first experienced in the garden at Mr. Dunross's
house. The same mysterious trembling shuddered through me from head to
foot. I looked about me again, with no distinct consciousness of what
the objects were on which my eyes rested. My nerves trembled, on that
lovely summer night, as if there had been an electric disturbance