s foot
against the fender, almost overturning it, and, throwing back his
head, clasped his hands behind it and scowled at the black ceiling
above him. He was a man who liked things explained, and he felt both
sullen and angry that he should have had an experience which baffled
his powers of analysis and reason. His partial solution gave him no
satisfaction, and he had the uncomfortable sense of actual mystery,
and a premonition of something more to come. This, however, he was
willing to attribute to the depressed condition of his spirits, which
threw its gloom over every object, abstract and concrete, and
which induced the tendency to exaggerate any strange or unpleasant
experience of which he had been the victim. It was useless to try to
think of anything else; his brain felt as if it had resolved itself
into a kaleidoscope, through which those three scenes shifted
eternally. Finally, he fell asleep, and did not awaken until it was
time to dress for dinner. Before he left his room, Weir's maid knocked
at his door and handed him a note, in which the lady of Rhyd-Alwyn
apologized for leaving him to himself for an entire day, and announced
that she would not appear at dinner, but would meet him in the
drawing-room immediately thereafter. Dartmouth read the note through
with a puzzled expression: it was formal and stilted, even for Weir.
She was gone when he came to his senses in the gallery the night
before. Had she awakened and become conscious of the situation? It was
not a pleasant reminiscense for a girl to have, and he felt honestly
sorry for her. Then he groaned in spirit at the prospect of an hour's
tete-a-tete with Sir Iltyd. He liked Sir Iltyd very much, and thought
him possessed of several qualifications valuable in a father-in-law,
among them his devotion to his library; but in his present frame of
mind he felt that history and politics were topics he would like to
relegate out of existence.

He put the best face on the situation he could muster, however, and
managed to conceal from Sir Iltyd the fact that his spirits were in
other than their normal condition. The old baronet's eyes were not
very sharp, particularly when he had a cold, and he was not disposed
to notice Harold's pallor and occasional fits of abstraction, so long
as one of his favorite topics was under discussion. When Dartmouth
found that he had got safely through the dinner, he felt that he
had accomplished a feat which would have rejoiced the