might have fancied him crossed by the shadow of some terrific apparition.
Sometimes for a whole day, or even more, he would withdraw himself from
the society of his family, and, in morose and moody solitude, take his
meals alone in his library, and steal out unattended to wander among the
thickets and glades of his park. Sometimes, again, he would sit for hours
in the room which had been Sir Wynston's, and, with a kind of horrible
resolution, often loiter there till after nightfall. In such hours, the
servants would listen with curious awe, as they heard his step, pacing
to and fro, in that deserted and inauspicious chamber, while his voice,
in broken sentences, was also imperfectly audible, as if maintaining a
muttered dialogue. These eccentric practices gradually invested him, in
the eyes of his domestics, with a certain preternatural mystery, which
enhanced the fear with which they habitually regarded him, and was
subsequently confirmed by his giving orders to have the furniture taken
out of the ominous suite of rooms, and the doors nailed up and secured.
He gave no reason for this odd and abrupt measure, and gossip of course
reported that the direction had originated in his having encountered the
specter of the murdered baronet, in one of these strange and unseasonable
visits to the scene of the fearful catastrophe.

In addition to all this, Marston's conduct towards his wife became
strangely capricious. He avoided her society more than ever; and when he
did happen to exchange a few words with her, they were sometimes harsh
and violent, and at others remorsefully gentle and sad, and this without
any changes of conduct upon her part to warrant the wayward uncertainty
of his treatment. Under all these circumstances, Mrs. Marston's
unhappiness and uneasiness greatly increased. Mademoiselle de Barras,
too, upon several late occasions, had begun to assume a tone of authority
and dictation, which justly offended the mistress of the establishment.
Meanwhile Charles Marston had returned to Cambridge; and Rhoda, no longer