replied.

She nodded. "Yes, I know; and you know too, don't you? I saw your face
when you came to shake hands with mamma. You felt the depression very
soon. It is simply frightful in that bedroom sometimes. What do you
think it is--bewitchment? In Greece, where I was a little girl, it might
have been; but not in England, do you think? Or do you?"

"Cheer up, Thea. It will all come right," he insisted.

"No, papa." She shook her dark head. "Nothing is right while it comes."

"It is nothing that we ourselves have ever done in our lives that I
will swear to you," said Mrs. M'Leod suddenly. "And we have changed our
servants several times. So we know it is not them."

"Never mind. Let us enjoy ourselves while we can," said Mr. M'Leod,
opening the champagne.

But we did not enjoy ourselves. The talk failed. There were long
silences.

"I beg your pardon," I said, for I thought some one at my elbow was
about to speak.

"Ah! That is the other thing!" said Miss M'Leod. Her mother groaned.

We were silent again, and, in a few seconds it must have been, a live
grief beyond words--not ghostly dread or horror, but aching, helpless
grief--overwhelmed us, each, I felt, according to his or her nature,
and held steady like the beam of a burning glass. Behind that pain I was
conscious there was a desire on somebody's part to explain something on
which some tremendously important issue hung.

Meantime I rolled bread pills and remembered my sins; M'Leod considered
his own reflection in a spoon; his wife seemed to be praying, and the
girl fidgetted desperately with hands and feet, till the darkness passed
on--as though the malignant rays of a burning-glass had been shifted
from us.

"There," said Miss M'Leod, half rising. "Now you see what makes a happy
home. Oh, sell it--sell it, father mine, and let us go away!"

"But I've spent thousands on it. You shall go to Harrogate next week,
Thea dear."

"I'm only just back from hotels. I am so tired of packing."

"Cheer up, Thea. It is over. You know it does not often come here twice
in the same night. I think we shall dare now to be comfortable."

He lifted a dish-cover, and helped his wife and daughter. His face was
lined and fallen like an old man's after debauch, but his hand did not
shake, and his voice was clear. As he worked to restore us by speech
and action, he reminded me of a grey-muzzled collie herding demoralised
sheep.

After dinner we sat round the dining-room fi