n was setting in the west.
Transformed from a natural object by the medium of his over-strained
and weary mind, it now presented a sinister and mocking face, as it
peered through the diamonded panes and poured a flood of yellow light
upon the floor.

CHAPTER XVI

THE BLINDNESS OF THE BISHOP

The following morning, Felicity did not appear at the breakfast-table,
a circumstance sufficiently unusual to cause the bishop some
uneasiness, for she rarely failed to rise at a reasonable hour.

"Lena," he said, "go upstairs and see whether Miss Wycliffe is ill, but
don't wake her if she is still asleep."

Left alone, he glanced over the morning paper, too much absorbed in the
hypothesis that would explain his daughter's non-appearance to find
much amusement in the editor's bland and innocuous comments upon the
sensational episode of the preceding night. He recalled her evident
excitement and preoccupation when she came in from her walk with Leigh.
If her interview with the young man had been what he feared, it was
natural she should have lain awake long into the night, and his heart
misgave him at this additional confirmation of his insight.

When Lena Harpster received no response to her gentle tap, she ventured
to open the door softly and to step within her mistress's room. The
lightest sleeper could scarcely have been awakened by her entrance, as
noiseless as a shadow or the slow swaying of a curtain. She stood near
the foot of the bed, in the dim and fragrant room, looking at the
beautiful head upon the pillow, the dark, abundant hair, the half-open
lips relaxed from the control of the mind, revealing now more clearly
all the promises and passions which when awake they might deny.

Some sense of the awe and mystery of sleep caused Lena to stand thus
motionless at gaze, herself a pale, ethereal figure, scarcely less
beautiful than her mistress. There was a guilty consciousness also of
deliberate intrusion. Familiar as she was with the room, it now took
on a different aspect to her eyes. All the objects of art, the
tapestries and pictures and statuettes, which she had admired for
themselves, seemed in a peculiar way the property of their happy owner,
an overflowing expression of her abundant loveliness. What a contrast
that lace-covered bed, that nest of luxury, presented to her own simple
couch beneath the roof, which served merely as a place where she could
lie down and rest! And there was another contra