new happiness had come to me. The woman's face seemed always
before me, and the thought of it gave me an unwonted thrill of
pleasure, unlike anything I had ever felt before.

I turned as I reached the house, and looked back upon the scene.
It had certainly changed in the short hour since I had come out,
and my mood had changed with it. Just like my luck, I thought, to
fall in love with a ghost! But in old times I would have sighed,
and gone to bed more sad than ever, at such a melancholy
conclusion. To-night I felt happy, almost for the first time in my
life. The gloomy old study seemed cheerful when I went in. The
old pictures on the walls smiled at me, and I sat down in my deep
chair with a new and delightful sensation that I was not alone.
The idea of having seen a ghost, and of feeling much the better for
it, was so absurd that I laughed softly, as I took up one of the
books I had brought with me and began to read.

That impression did not wear off. I slept peacefully, and in the
morning I threw open my windows to the summer air and looked down
at the garden, at the stretches of green and at the colored flower-
beds, at the circling swallows and at the bright water.

"A man might make a paradise of this place," I exclaimed. "A man
and a woman together!"

From that day the old Castle no longer seemed gloomy, and I think I
ceased to be sad; for some time, too, I began to take an interest
in the place, and to try and make it more alive. I avoided my old
Welsh nurse, lest she should damp my humor with some dismal
prophecy, and recall my old self by bringing back memories of my