machicolated square tower that made me dizzy, her morning music,
her disposition to tell me so many more things than she asked,
rang out and led me on. I have not seen Bly since the day
I left it, and I daresay that to my older and more informed
eyes it would now appear sufficiently contracted. But as my
little conductress, with her hair of gold and her frock of blue,
danced before me round corners and pattered down passages,
I had the view of a castle of romance inhabited by a rosy sprite,
such a place as would somehow, for diversion of the young idea,
take all color out of storybooks and fairytales.
Wasn't it just a storybook over which I had fallen adoze
and adream? No; it was a big, ugly, antique, but convenient house,
embodying a few features of a building still older, half-replaced and
half-utilized, in which I had the fancy of our being almost
as lost as a handful of passengers in a great drifting ship.
Well, I was, strangely, at the helm!



II


This came home to me when, two days later, I drove over
with Flora to meet, as Mrs. Grose said, the little gentleman;
and all the more for an incident that, presenting itself
the second evening, had deeply disconcerted me.
The first day had been, on the whole, as I have expressed,
reassuring; but I was to see it wind up in keen apprehension.
The postbag, that evening--it came late--contained a letter
for me, which, however, in the hand of my employer,