CHAPTER XV


_The Chamber of Ghosts_.

But now she returned once more into the usual routine of the family. I
fear I was unable to repress all signs of agitation when, next day, she
entered the dining-room, after we were seated, and took her customary
place at the table. Her behaviour was much the same as before; but her
face was very different. There was light in it now, and signs of mental
movement. The smooth forehead would be occasionally wrinkled, and she
would fall into moods which were evidently not of inanity, but of
abstracted thought. She took especial care that our eyes should not
meet. If by chance they did, instead of sinking hers, she kept them
steady, and opened them wider, as if she was fixing them on nothing at
all, or she raised them still higher, as if she was looking at something
above me, before she allowed them to fall. But the change in her
altogether was such that it must have attracted the notice and roused
the speculation of Lady Hilton at least. For me, so well did she act her
part, that I was thrown into perplexity by it. And when day after day
passed, and the longing to speak to her grew, and remained unsatisfied,
new doubts arose. Perhaps she was tired of me. Perhaps her new studies
filled her mind with the clear, gladsome morning light of the pure
intellect, which always throws doubt and distrust and a kind of negation
upon the moonlight of passion, mysterious, and mingled ever with faint
shadows of pain. I walked as in an unresting sleep. Utterly as I loved
her, I was yet alarmed and distressed to find how entirely my being had
grown dependent upon her love; how little of individual, self-existing,
self-upholding life, I seemed to have left; how little I cared for
anything, save as I could associate it with her.