orks, which were chiefly on occult
subjects, day and night, except when she was imparting to me choice
excerpts of the most baleful and fearsome kind. Indeed, before a week
was over I found myself to be an expert in the history of the cult, as
well as in its manifestations, which latter I had been versed in for a
good many years.

The result of all this was that it set me brooding. Such, at least, I
gathered was the fact when Aunt Janet took me to task for it. She always
speaks out according to her convictions, so that her thinking I brooded
was to me a proof that I did; and after a personal examination I
came--reluctantly--to the conclusion that she was right, so far, at any
rate, as my outer conduct was concerned. The state of mind I was in,
however, kept me from making any acknowledgment of it--the real cause of
my keeping so much to myself and of being so _distrait_. And so I went
on, torturing myself as before with introspective questioning; and she,
with her mind set on my actions, and endeavouring to find a cause for
them, continued and expounded her beliefs and fears.

Her nightly chats with me when we were alone after dinner--for I had come
to avoid her questioning at other times--kept my imagination at high
pressure. Despite myself, I could not but find new cause for concern in
the perennial founts of her superstition. I had thought, years ago, that
I had then sounded the depths of this branch of psychicism; but this new
phase of thought, founded on the really deep hold which the existence of
my beautiful visitor and her sad and dreadful circumstances had taken
upon me, brought me a new concern in the matter of self-importance. I
came to think that I must reconstruct my self-values, and begin a fresh
understanding of ethical beliefs. Do what I would, my mind would keep
turning on the uncanny subjects brought before it. I began to apply them
one by one to my own late experience, and unconsciously to try to fit
them in turn to the present case.

The effect of this brooding was that I was, despite my own will, struck
by the similarity of circumstances bearing on my visitor, and the
conditions apportioned by tradition and superstition to such strange
survivals from earlier ages as these partial existences which are rather
Undead than Living--still walking the earth, though claimed by the world
of the Dead. Amongst them are the Vampire, or the Wehr-Wolf. To this
class also might belong in a measure th