white kid glove; his wild blue eyes,
insensible of what was before them, seemed intently fixed on something
that no one else could see, and he was talking to himself, as we call it
when folk talk with the invisible.

It was very silly, but I really felt the colour fading from my face with
fright. My great-grandfather's back was to the west, where a few bars of
red across the sky, as it was to be seen through the Scotch firs, were
all that remained of the sunset. That strange light was on everything,
of which modern pre-Raphaelite painters are so fond. I was tired with my
long journey and previous excitement; and when I suddenly remembered
that Mr. Vandaleur was said to have in some measure lost his reason, a
shudder came over me. In a moment more he saw me. I think my crimson
cloak caught his eye, but his welcome was hardly less alarming than his
abstraction. He started, and held up his hands, and a pained, puzzled
expression troubled his face. Then a flush, which seemed to make him
look older than the whiteness; and then, with a shrill, feeble cry of
"Victoire, ma belle!" he tottered towards me so hastily that I thought
he must have fallen; but, like a vision, a little figure flitted from
the French window of the drawing-room, and in a moment my
great-grandmother was supporting him, and soothing him with gentle
words in French. I could see now how helpless he was. For a bit he
seemed still puzzled and confused; but he clung to her and kissed her
hand, and suffered himself to be led indoors. Then I followed them,
through the window, into the room where the candles were not yet lighted
for economy's sake--the glare of the red sunset bars making everything
dark to me--with a strange sense of gloom.

It would be hard to imagine a stronger contrast than that between my
life in my new home and my life in my home upon the moors. At the
Arkwrights' we lived so essentially with the times. Our politics, on the
whole, were liberal; our theology inclined to be broad; our ideas on
social subjects were reformatory, progressive, experimental. Scientific
subjects were a speciality of the household; and, living in a
manufacturing district, mere neighbourhood kept us with the great
current of mercantile interests. We argued each other into a general
unfixity of opinions; and, full of youthful dreams of golden ages, were
willing to believe this young world--where not yet we, but only our
words could fly--to be but upon the threshold of