lay upon the smooth, sweet turf amidst the summer flowers, half in sun
and half in shadow, and holding the girl Rachel's hand, called and
summoned those companions, and shaped in solid form, upon the earth we
tread upon, the horror which we can but hint at, which we can only name
under a figure. I would not tell Villiers of this, nor of that
resemblance, which struck me as with a blow upon my heart, when I saw
the portrait, which filled the cup of terror at the end. What this can
mean I dare not guess. I know that what I saw perish was not Mary, and
yet in the last agony Mary's eyes looked into mine. Whether there can
be any one who can show the last link in this chain of awful mystery, I
do not know, but if there be any one who can do this, you, Raymond, are
the man. And if you know the secret, it rests with you to tell it or
not, as you please.

I am writing this letter to you immediately on my getting back to town.
I have been in the country for the last few days; perhaps you may be
able to guess in which part. While the horror and wonder of London was
at its height--for "Mrs. Beaumont," as I have told you, was well known
in society--I wrote to my friend Dr. Phillips, giving some brief
outline, or rather hint, of what happened, and asking him to tell me
the name of the village where the events he had related to me occurred.
He gave me the name, as he said with the less hesitation, because
Rachel's father and mother were dead, and the rest of the family had
gone to a relative in the State of Washington six months before. The
parents, he said, had undoubtedly died of grief and horror caused by
the terrible death of their daughter, and by what had gone before that
death. On the evening of the day which I received Phillips' letter I
was at Caermaen, and standing beneath the mouldering Roman walls, white
with the winters of seventeen hundred years, I looked over the meadow
where once had stood the older temple of the "God of the Deeps," and
saw a house gleaming in the sunlight. It was the house where Helen had
lived. I stayed at Caermaen for several days. The people of the
place, I found, knew little and had guessed less. Those whom I spoke
to on the matter seemed surprised that an antiquarian (as I professed
myself to be) should trouble about a village tragedy, of which they
gave a very commonplace version, and, as you may imagine, I told
nothing of what I knew. Most of my time was spent in the great wood
t