body and soul
could it but fix its claws once more upon him. As I watched the grim,
round-backed figure pacing the corridor or walking in the garden, this
imminent danger seemed to take bodily shape, and I could almost fancy
that I saw this most loathsome and dangerous of all the fiends
crouching closely in his very shadow, like a half-cowed beast which
slinks beside its keeper, ready at any unguarded moment to spring at
his throat. And the dead woman, the woman who had spent her life in
warding off this danger, took shape also to my imagination, and I saw
her as a shadowy but beautiful presence which intervened for ever with
arms uplifted to screen the man whom she loved.

In some subtle way he divined the sympathy which I had for him, and he
showed in his own silent fashion that he appreciated it. He even
invited me once to share his afternoon walk, and although no word
passed between us on this occasion, it was a mark of confidence which
he had never shown to anyone before. He asked me also to index his
library (it was one of the best private libraries in England), and I
spent many hours in the evening in his presence, if not in his society,
he reading at his desk and I sitting in a recess by the window reducing
to order the chaos which existed among his books. In spite of these
close relations I was never again asked to enter the chamber in the
turret.

And then came my revulsion of feeling. A single incident changed all
my sympathy to loathing, and made me realize that my employer still
remained all that he had ever been, with the additional vice of
hypocrisy. What happened was as follows.

One evening Miss Witherton had gone down to Broadway, the neighbouring
village, to sing at a concert for some charity, and I, according to my
promise, had walked over to escort her back. The drive sweeps round
under the eastern turret, and I observed as I passed that the light was
lit in the circular room. It was a summer evening, and the window,
which was a little higher than our heads, was open. We were, as it
happened, engrossed in our own conversation at the moment and we had
paused upon the lawn which skirts the old turret, when suddenly
something broke in upon our talk and turned our thoughts away from our
own affairs.

It was a voice--the voice undoubtedly of a woman. It was low--so low
that it was only in that still night air that we could have heard it,
but, hushed as it was, there was no mistaking its