and
that he had been led by sorrow to listen at the key-hole, and so on. I
trembled for the girl's secret, but he had himself in hand, and did
not betray her. No one out there knows for certain what her
abnormalities are."

"How about Lambert? Why didn't he take a hand?"

"He seemed bewildered by it all, and overawed by Clarke and the girl's
'controls.' 'It's all above timber-line for me,' he said, but he
didn't like their coming away a little bit. He was angry with Clarke
for breaking up his home, and if the girl had been his own I think he
would have stopped the business long ago. Then there was a young
fellow, Clinton Ward, who was working for Lambert, a fine young
fellow--"

"I remember him."

"Well, it seems that his father is a partner in a publishing firm in
Boston, and Clarke tried to make use of him to get his book published,
and I believe his firm is to take it. Meanwhile the young fellow is in
love with Viola, and willing to marry her and take chances, but his
family is very properly aghast. Viola, knowing this--or for some other
reason--refuses him. And there you are! The girl seems cursed on all
sides, and, worst of all, has to endure Clarke and his ravings twelve
hours of every mortal day."

"What is her relation to Clarke?" asked Serviss, hesitatingly.

"Well, now, I don't know. Sometimes I think he controls her by some
infernal hypnotic power; and then again, from some phrase of her own,
I think she considers her mind diseased, and marriage with any one
else impossible."

"I don't see how the mother can stand by and see her daughter's life
burned away."

"She, in her turn, seems enslaved to the dead. She has often told me
that her father's spirit is leading her every movement."

"That particular ghost is Clarke--don't you think?"

Britt's eyes narrowed. "I don't know. I have never been able to
connect him directly with a single one of these manifestations, and
yet he must be at the bottom of part of it."

"It all comes back, then, to the girl herself."

Britt rose uneasily. "I repeat I am completely at sea. I have studied
every line of old Randall's notes till I'm 'dopy' myself. Everything
has conspired to make the girl hysterical--to fasten some accursed
mental weakness upon her. If I could have stopped it two years ago she
might have outgrown it. Every year now makes it less easy for her to
shake it off--whatever it is."

"Atrocious!" exclaimed Serviss. "Has no one authority to act?"