some heavy burthen of truth.

"--and in hiding had watched the life of his double. I sat up speculating
what effect such an observation, terrible no doubt and grotesque, would
be likely to have on the soul of the watching man. But there was another
speculation with which I entertained my mind that night."

"Let us have it," said Chichester, leaning forward, and, with the gesture
characteristic of him, dropping his hands down between his knees. "Let us
have it."

"Suppose the man to remain and, in hiding, to watch the life of his
double, what effect would such an observation be likely to have upon the
double?"

Malling paused. The rector, with an almost violent movement of his big
hand and arm, took his cup from the table and drank his tea.

"It didn't occur to you, I suppose, when composing your sermon to follow
that train of thought?" said Malling to Chichester.

"No," replied the curate, slowly, and like one thinking profoundly. "I
was too engrossed with the feelings of the man. But, then, you thought
of the double as a living man, with all the sensations of a man?"

"That was your fault," said Malling.

"His fault!" said Lady Sophia, with a sort of latent sharpness, and
laying an emphasis on the second word.

"Certainly; for making the narrative so vital and human."

He addressed himself again to the curate.

"Did you not give to the double the attributes of a man? Did you not
make his wife come to bid him good night, bend down to kiss him, waft
him a characteristic farewell?"

"It is true. I did," said Chichester, still speaking like a man in deep
thought.

"That was the most terrible part of all," said Lady Sophia. In her voice
there was an accent almost of horror. "It sickened me to the soul,"
she continued--"the idea of a woman bidding a tender good night to an
apparition."

"I took it as a man," said Malling.

They had all three, strangely, left the rector out of this discussion,
and he seemed willing that it should be so. He now sat back in his chair
listening to all that was being said, somewhat as he had listened to the
sermon of Chichester, in a sort of ghastly silence.

"How could a man's double be a man?" said Lady Sophia.

"We are in the region of assumption and of speculation," returned
Malling, quietly, "a not uninteresting region either, I think. The other
night for a whole hour, having assumed the double man, I speculated on
his existence, spied upon by his other self. And you nev