Edgar and I saw little of each other save at the week’s end and then only for a passing moment. As the one entered the front door the other stepped out. The automobile which brought the one carried away the other. As we met, we invariably bowed and spoke. Sometimes we shook hands and just as invariably exchanged glances of inquiry seemingly casual, but in reality, penetrating.

I doubt if he ever saw anything in me to awaken his alarm. But I saw much in him to awaken mine. Though the control he had over his features was remarkable, it is easy for the discerning eye to mark the difference between what is forced and what is spontaneous. The restlessness of an uneasy heart was rapidly giving way in him to more cheerful emotions. His mercurial nature was reasserting itself and the charm he had for a short time lost was to be felt again in all he did and said.

This was what I had expected to happen, but not so soon; and my heart grew more and more heavy as the month advanced. The recurring breaks in his courtship of Orpha, and the presence in his absence of a possible rival with opportunities of unspoken devotion equal to his own, had given zest to a situation somewhat too tame before.[Pg 55] From indifference to the game or to what he may have looked upon as such, he began to show a growing interest in it. A great fortune linked with a woman he felt free to court under his rival’s eyes did not look quite so undesirable after all.

[Pg 55]

I may have done him injustice. Jealousy is not apt to be fair. But, if I read him aright, he was just the man to be swayed by the influences I have mentioned, and loving Orpha as I did, I found it hard to maintain even a show of equanimity at what was fast becoming for me a hopeless mystery. It was during these days that the monotony of my thoughts was broken by my hearing for the first time of the Presence said to haunt this house. I do not think my uncle had meant me to receive any intimation of it, at least, not yet. He may have given command and he may simply have expressed a wish, or he may have trusted to the good sense of his entourage to keep silence where speaking would do no good. But, let that be as it may, I had come and gone through the house to this day without an idea that its many wonders were not confined to its unusual architecture, its sumptuous appointments and the almost baronial character of its service and generous housekeeping, but extended to that crowning glory of so many historic structures in my own country, of—I will not say a ghost, but a presence, for by that name it was known and sometimes spoken 

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