at was the first
warning. With regard to the second appearance, in the cathedral of
Bruges, I surmised that that only indirectly affected myself.
Primarily it was the celebration of a fiendish triumph over one who
had preceded me in daring to love Rosetta Rosa, but doubtless also it
was meant in a subsidiary degree as a second warning to the youth who
followed in Alresca's footsteps. Then there were the two appearances
during my journey from London to Paris with Rosa's jewels--in the
train and on the steamer. Matters by that time had become more
serious. I was genuinely in love, and the ghost's anger was quickened.
The train was wrecked and the steamer might have been sunk, and I
could not help thinking that the ghost, in some ineffectual way, had
been instrumental in both these disasters. The engine-driver, who said
he was "dazed," and the steersman, who attributed his mistake at the
wheel to the interference of some unknown outsider--were not these
things an indication that my dreadful suspicion was well grounded? And
if so, to what frightful malignity did they not point! Here was a
spirit, which in order to appease the pangs of a supernatural
jealousy, was ready to use its immaterial powers to destroy scores of
people against whom it could not possibly have any grudge. The most
fanatical anarchism is not worse than this.

Those attempts had failed. But now the aspect of affairs was changed.
The ghost of Lord Clarenceux had more power over me now--I felt that
acutely; and I explained it by the fact that I was in the near
neighborhood of Rosa. It was only when she was near that the jealous
hate of this spectre exercised its full efficacy.

In such wise did I reason the matter out to myself. But reasoning was
quite unnecessary. I knew by a sure instinct. All the dark thoughts
of the ghost had passed into my brain, and if they had been
transcribed in words of fire and burnt upon my retina, I could not
have been more certain of their exact import.

As I sat in my room at the hotel that night I speculated morosely upon
my plight and upon the future. Had a man ever been so situated before?
Well, probably so. We go about in a world where secret influences are
continually at work for us or against us, and we do not suspect their
existence, because we have no imagination. For it needs imagination to
perceive the truth--that is why the greatest poets are always the
greatest teachers.

As for you who are disposed to smile a