used to see both: far more
then than now--for now you are strong, and strength dispenses with
subtlety. But still,--Dr. John, you have what they call in this country
'un air fin,' that nobody can, mistake. Madame Beck saw it, and---"

"And liked it," said he, laughing, "because she has it herself. But,
Lucy, give me that letter--you don't really care for it."

To this provocative speech I made no answer. Graham in mirthful mood
must not be humoured too far. Just now there was a new sort of smile
playing about his lips--very sweet, but it grieved me somehow--a new
sort of light sparkling in his eyes: not hostile, but not reassuring. I
rose to go--I bid him good-night a little sadly.

His sensitiveness--that peculiar, apprehensive, detective faculty of
his--felt in a moment the unspoken complaint--the scarce-thought
reproach. He asked quietly if I was offended. I shook my head as
implying a negative.

"Permit me, then, to speak a little seriously to you before you go. You
are in a highly nervous state. I feel sure from what is apparent in
your look and manner, however well controlled, that whilst alone this
evening in that dismal, perishing sepulchral garret--that dungeon under
the leads, smelling of damp and mould, rank with phthisis and catarrh:
a place you never ought to enter--that you saw, or _thought_ you saw,
some appearance peculiarly calculated to impress the imagination. I
know that you _are_ not, nor ever were, subject to material terrors,
fears of robbers, &c.--I am not so sure that a visitation, bearing a
spectral character, would not shake your very mind. Be calm now. This
is all a matter of the nerves, I see: but just specify the vision."

"You will tell nobody?"

"Nobody--most certainly. You may trust me as implicitly as you did Pere
Silas. Indeed, the doctor is perhaps the safer confessor of the two,
though he has not grey hair."

"You will not laugh?"

"Perhaps I may, to do you good: but not in scorn. Lucy, I feel as a
friend towards you, though your timid nature is slow to trust."

He now looked like a friend: that indescribable smile and sparkle were
gone; those formidable arched curves of lip, nostril, eyebrow, were
depressed; repose marked his attitude--attention sobered his aspect.
Won to confidence, I told him exactly what I had seen: ere now I had
narrated to him the legend of the house--whiling away with that
narrative an hour of a certain mild October afternoon, when he and I
rode th