ight of a night vision.

One enormous sea-bord cliff in particular figures in the narrative; and
for some forgotten reason or other this cliff was described in the story
as being without a name. Accuracy would require the statement to be
that a remarkable cliff which resembles in many points the cliff of the
description bears a name that no event has made famous.

T. H.
March 1899

THE PERSONS

ELFRIDE SWANCOURT a young Lady
CHRISTOPHER SWANCOURT a Clergyman
STEPHEN SMITH an Architect
HENRY KNIGHT a Reviewer and Essayist
CHARLOTTE TROYTON a rich Widow
GERTRUDE JETHWAY a poor Widow
SPENSER HUGO LUXELLIAN a Peer
LADY LUXELLIAN his Wife
MARY AND KATE two little Girls
WILLIAM WORM a dazed Factotum
JOHN SMITH a Master-mason
JANE SMITH his Wife
MARTIN CANNISTER a Sexton
UNITY a Maid-servant

Other servants, masons, labourers, grooms, nondescripts, etc., etc.

THE SCENE

Mostly on the outskirts of Lower Wessex.

Chapter I

'A fair vestal, throned in the west'

Elfride Swancourt was a girl whose emotions lay very near the surface.
Their nature more precisely, and as modified by the creeping hours
of time, was known only to those who watched the circumstances of her
history.

Personally, she was the combination of very interesting particulars,
whose rarity, however, lay in the combination itself rather than in the
individual elements combined. As a matter of fact, you did not see the
form and substance of her features when conversing with her; and this
charming power of preventing a material study of her lineaments by an
interlocutor, originated not in the cloaking effect of a well-formed
manner (for her manner was childish and scarcely formed), but in the
attractive crudeness of the remarks themselves. She had lived all her
life in retirement--the monstrari gigito of idle men had not flattered
her, and at the age of nineteen or twenty she was no further on in
social consciousness than an urban young lady of fifteen.

One point in her, however, you did notice: that was her eyes. In them
was seen a sublimation of all of he