of livery, was
informed that the family had retired for the night, and was then led
into a large and lofty room where my supper was awaiting me, in a
forlorn manner, at one extremity of a lonesome mahogany wilderness of
dining-table.

I was too tired and out of spirits to eat or drink much, especially
with the solemn servant waiting on me as elaborately as if a small
dinner party had arrived at the house instead of a solitary man. In a
quarter of an hour I was ready to be taken up to my bedchamber. The
solemn servant conducted me into a prettily furnished room--said,
"Breakfast at nine o'clock, sir"--looked all round him to see that
everything was in its proper place, and noiselessly withdrew.

"What shall I see in my dreams to-night?" I thought to myself, as I put
out the candle; "the woman in white? or the unknown inhabitants of this
Cumberland mansion?" It was a strange sensation to be sleeping in the
house, like a friend of the family, and yet not to know one of the
inmates, even by sight!

VI

When I rose the next morning and drew up my blind, the sea opened
before me joyously under the broad August sunlight, and the distant
coast of Scotland fringed the horizon with its lines of melting blue.

The view was such a surprise, and such a change to me, after my weary
London experience of brick and mortar landscape, that I seemed to burst
into a new life and a new set of thoughts the moment I looked at it. A
confused sensation of having suddenly lost my familiarity with the
past, without acquiring any additional clearness of idea in reference
to the present or the future, took possession of my mind.
Circumstances that were but a few days old faded back in my memory, as
if they had happened months and months since. Pesca's quaint
announcement of the means by which he had procured me my present
employment; the farewell evening I had passed with my mother and
sister; even my mysterious adventure on the way home from
Hampstead--had all become like events which might have occurred at some
former epoch of my existence. Although the woman in white was still in
my mind, the image of her seemed to have grown dull and faint already.

A little before nine o'clock, I descended to the ground-floor of the
house. The solemn man-servant of the night before met me wandering
among the passages, and compassionately showed me the way to the
breakfast-room.

My first glance round me, as the man opened the door, disclosed