was content to
be alone for a little while.

Great God! The chair which Rosa had but that instant left was not
empty. Occupying it was a figure--the figure of the man whose portrait
hung on the wall--the figure of the man who had haunted me ever since
I met Rosa--the figure of Lord Clarenceux, whom Rosa had seen dead.

At last, oh, powers of hell, I knew you! The inmost mystery stood
clear. In one blinding flash of comprehension I felt the fullness of
my calamity. This man that I had seen was not a man, but a malign and
jealous spirit--using his spectral influences to crush the mortals
bold enough to love the woman whom he had loved on earth. The death of
Alresca, the unaccountable appearances in the cathedral, in the train,
on the steamer--everything was explained. And before that coldly
sneering, triumphant face, which bore the look of life, and which I
yet knew to be impalpable, I shook with the terrified ague of a
culprit.

A minute or a thousand years might have passed. Then Rosa returned. In
an instant the apparition had vanished. But by her pallid, drawn face
and her gray lips I knew that she had seen it. Truly she was cursed,
and I with her!

CHAPTER XVII

THE MENACE

From the moment of my avowal to Rosa it seemed that the evil spirit of
the dead Lord Clarenceux had assumed an ineffable dominion over me. I
cannot properly describe it; I cannot describe it all. I may only say
that I felt I had suddenly become the subject of a tyrant who would
punish me if I persisted in any course of conduct to which he
objected. I knew what fear was--the most terrible of all fears--the
fear of that which we cannot understand. The inmost and central throne
of my soul was commanded by this implacable ghost, this ghost which
did not speak, but which conveyed its ideas by means of a single
glance, a single sneer.

It was strange that I should be aware at once what was required of me,
and the reasons for these requirements. Till that night I had never
guessed the nature of the thing which for so many weeks had been
warning me; I had not even guessed that I was being warned; I had
taken for a man that which was not a man. Yet now, in an instant of
time, all was clear down to the smallest details. From the primal hour
when a liking for Rosa had arisen in my breast, the ghost of Lord
Clarenceux, always hovering uneasily near to its former love, had
showed itself to me.

The figure opposite the Devonshire Mansion--th