is the heightening touch of memory that his beauty was probably richer in
her imagination than in the real. It was a moot point to consider
whether the temptations that would be brought to bear upon him in his
course would exceed the staying power of his nature. Had he been a
wealthy youth he would have seemed one to tremble for. In spite of his
attractive ambitions and gentlemanly bearing, she thought it would
possibly be better for him if he never became known outside his lonely
tower,--forgetting that he had received such intellectual enlargement as
would probably make his continuance in Welland seem, in his own eye, a
slight upon his father's branch of his family, whose social standing had
been, only a few years earlier, but little removed from her own.

Suddenly she flung a cloak about her and went out on the terrace. She
passed down the steps to the lower lawn, through the door to the open
park, and there stood still. The tower was now discernible. As the
words in which a thought is expressed develop a further thought, so did
the fact of her having got so far influence her to go further. A person
who had casually observed her gait would have thought it irregular; and
the lessenings and increasings of speed with which she proceeded in the
direction of the pillar could be accounted for only by a motive much more
disturbing than an intention to look through a telescope. Thus she went
on, till, leaving the park, she crossed the turnpike-road, and entered
the large field, in the middle of which the fir-clad hill stood like Mont
St. Michel in its bay.

The stars were so bright as distinctly to show her the place, and now she
could see a faint light at the top of the column, which rose like a
shadowy finger pointing to the upper constellations. There was no wind,
in a human sense; but a steady stertorous breathing from the fir-trees
showed that, now as always, there was movement in apparent stagnation.
Nothing but an absolute vacuum could paralyze their utterance.

The door of the tower was shut. It was something more than the
freakishness which is engendered by a sickening monotony that had led
Lady Constantine thus far, and hence she made no ado about admitting
herself. Three years ago, when her every action was a thing of
propriety, she had known of no possible purpose which could have led her
abroad in a manner such as this.

She ascended the tower noiselessly. On raising her head above the
hatchway sh