d the music in your own room: would
you let me look about in it a little? something might suggest
itself!--Is it the room I saw you in once?"

"Not that," answered Arctura, "but the bedroom beyond it. I hear it
sometimes in either room, but louder in the bedroom. You can examine it
when you please.--If only you could find my bad dream, and drive it
out!--Will you come now?"

"It is near the earl's room: is there no danger of his hearing
anything?"

"Not the least. The room is not far from his, it is true, but it is not
in the same block; there are thick walls between. Besides he is too ill
to be up."

She led the way, and Donal followed her up the main staircase to the
second floor, and into the small, curious, ancient room, evidently one
of the oldest in the castle, which she had chosen for her sitting-room.
Perhaps if she had lived less in the shadow, she might have chosen a
less gloomy one: the sky was visible only through a little lane of
walls and gables and battlements. But it was very charming, with its
odd nooks and corners, recesses and projections. It looked an
afterthought, the utilization of a space accidentally defined by
rejection, as if every one of its sides were the wall of a distinct
building.

"I do wish, my lady," said Donal, "you would not sit so much where is
so little sunlight! Outer and inner things are in their origin one; the
light of the sun is the natural world-clothing of the truth, and
whoever sits much in the physical dark misses a great help to
understanding the things of the light. If I were your director," he
went on, "I would counsel you to change this room for one with a broad,
fair outlook; so that, when gloomy thoughts hid God from you, they
might have his eternal contradiction in the face of his heaven and
earth."

"It is but fair to tell you," replied Arctura, "that Sophia would have
had me do so; but while I felt about God as she taught me, what could
the fairest sunlight be to me?"

"Yes, what indeed!" returned Donal. "Do you know," he added presently,
his eyes straying about the room, "I feel almost as if I were trying to
understand a human creature. A house is so like a human mind, which
gradually disentangles and explains itself as you go on to know it! It
is no accidental resemblance, for, as an unavoidable necessity, every
house must be like those that built it."

"But in a very old house," said Arctura, "so many hands of so many
generations have been employed i