that seemed to have in it a
strange wistful trouble--not very marked, yet notable. She passed on
and vanished, leaving that look a lingering presence in Donal's
thought. What was it? Was it anything? What could it mean? Had he
really seen it? Was it there, or had he only imagined it?

Simmons kept him waiting a good while. He had found his lordship
getting up, and had had to stay to help him dress. At length he came,
excusing himself that his lordship's temper at such times--that was, in
his dumpy fits--was not of the evenest, and required a gentle hand. But
his lordship would see him--and could Mr. Grant find the way himself,
for his old bones ached with running up and down those endless stone
steps? Donal answered he knew the way, and sprang up the stair.

But his mind was more occupied with the coming interview than with the
way to it, which caused him to take a wrong turn after leaving the
stair: he had a good gift in space-relations, but instinct was here not
so keen as on a hill-side. The consequence was that he found himself in
the picture-gallery.

A strange feeling of pain, as at the presence of a condition he did not
wish to encourage, awoke in him at the discovery. He walked along,
however, thus taking, he thought, the readiest way to his lordship's
apartment: either he would find him in his bedroom, or could go through
that to his sitting-room! He glanced at the pictures he passed, and
seemed, strange to say, though, so far as he knew, he had never been in
the place except in the dark, to recognize some of them as belonging to
the stuff of the dream in which he had been wandering through the
night--only that was a glowing and gorgeous dream, whereas the pictures
were even commonplace! Here was something to be meditated upon--but for
the present postponed! His lordship was expecting him!

Arrived, as he thought, at the door of the earl's bedroom, he knocked,
and receiving no answer, opened it, and found himself in a narrow
passage. Nearly opposite was another door, partly open, and hearing a
movement within, he ventured to knock there. A voice he knew at once to
be lady Arctura's, invited him to enter. It was an old, lovely, gloomy
little room, in which sat the lady writing. It had but one low
lattice-window, to the west, but a fire blazed cheerfully in the
old-fashioned grate. She looked up, nor showed more surprise than if he
had been a servant she had rung for.

"I beg your pardon, my lady," he said: