to return to his mind with the strength of a fulfilled prophecy.

As he nodded, however, he turned about towards the house, and a
certain disfigurement struck upon his eyes. Two windows on the first
floor were entirely bricked up, and as the house was square with level
tiers of windows, they gave to it an unsightly look. Sir Charles
inquired of his companion if he could account for them.

"To be sure," said Jerkley, with the inattention of a man diverted
from serious thought to an unimportant topic. "They are the windows of
the room in which Mrs. Mardale died a quarter of a century ago. Mr.
Mardale locked the door as soon as his wife was taken from it to the
church, and the next day he had the windows blocked. No one but he has
entered the room during all these years, the key has never left his
person. It must be the ruin of a room by now. You can imagine it, the
dust gathering, the curtains rotting, in the darkness and at times the
old man sitting there with his head running on days long since dead.
But you know Mr. Mardale, he is not as other men."

Sir Charles swung round alertly to his companion. To him at all events
the topic was not an indifferent one.

"Yet you say, you believe that he is void of the natural affections.
Last night we saw a proof, a crazy proof if you will, but none the
less a proof of his devotion to his daughter. To-day you give me as
sure a one of his devotion to his dead wife," and almost before he had
finished, Mr. Mardale was calling to him from the steps of the house.

He spent all that morning in the great drawing-room on the first
floor. It was a room of rich furniture, grown dingy with dust and