instinct was to shut out the light and succumb to his
enemy without resistance. If he had been anywhere but at Rhyd-Alwyn
he would not have thought twice about it; but if he shut himself up
in his room, not only would Weir be frightened and unhappy, but it
was probable that Sir Iltyd would question the desirability of a
son-in-law who was given to prolonged and uncontrollable attacks of
the blues. He dressed and went down-stairs, but Weir was nowhere to be
found, and after a search through the various rooms and corners of the
castle which she was in the habit of frequenting, he met her maid
and was informed that Miss Penrhyn was not well and would not come
down-stairs before dinner. The news was very unwelcome to Dartmouth.
Weir at least would have been a distraction. Now he must get through a
dismal day, and fight his enemy by himself. To make matters worse, it
was raining, and he could not go out and ride or hunt. He went into
Sir Iltyd's library and talked to him for the rest of the morning. Sir
Iltyd was not exciting, at his best, and to-day he had a bad cold; so
after lunch Dartmouth went up to his tower and resigned himself to his
own company. He sat down before the fire, and taking his head between
his hands allowed the blue devils to triumph. He felt dull as well as
depressed; but for a time he made an attempt to solve the problem of
the phenomenon to which he had been twice subjected. That it was a
phenomenon he did not see any reason to doubt. If he had spent his
life in a vain attempt to write poetry and an unceasing wish for the
necessary inspiration, there would be nothing remarkable in his mind
yielding suddenly to the impetus of accumulated pressure, wrenching
itself free of the will's control, and dashing off on a wild excursion
of its own. But he had never voluntarily taken a pen in his hand
to make verse, nor had he even felt the desire to possess the gift,
except as a part of general ambition. He may have acknowledged the
regret that he could not immortalize himself by writing a great poem,
but the regret was the offspring of personal ambition, not of yearning
poetical instinct. But the most extraordinary phase of the matter was
that such a tempest could take place in a brain as well regulated
as his own. He was eminently a practical man, and a good deal of a
thinker. He had never been given to flights of imagination, and even
in his attacks of melancholy, although his will might be somewhat
enfeebled,