“I never will tell exactly what I saw,” said I, “unless some one else sees it too, and then I will give corroborative testimony; but otherwise, I shall be discredited and accused of dreaming.”

“Tell me,” said Dr. Bretton; “I will hear it in my professional character. I look on you now from a professional point of view, and I read, perhaps, all you would conceal—in your eye, which is curiously vivid and restless; in your cheek, which the blood has forsaken; in your hand, which you cannot steady. Come, Lucy, speak and tell me.”

“You would laugh——”

“If you don’t tell me you shall have no more letters.”

“You are laughing now.”

“I will again take away that single epistle. Being mine, I think I have a right to reclaim it.”

I felt raillery in his words. It made me grave and quiet; but I folded up the letter and covered it from sight.

“You may hide it, but I can possess it any moment I choose. You don’t know my skill in sleight of hand. I might practise as a conjurer if I liked. Mamma says sometimes, too, that I have an harmonizing property of tongue and eye; but you never saw that in me—did you, Lucy?”

“Indeed—indeed—when you were a mere boy I used to see both—far more then than now; for now you are strong, and strength dispenses with subtlety. But still, Dr. John, you have what they call in this country ‘un air fin,’ that nobody can mistake. Madame Beck saw it, and—”

“And liked it,” said he, laughing, “because she has it herself. But, Lucy, give me that letter. You don’t really care for it.”

To this provocative speech I made no answer. Graham in mirthful mood must not be humoured too far. Just now there was a new sort of smile playing about his lips—very sweet, but it grieved me somehow; a new sort of light sparkling in his eyes—not hostile, but not reassuring. I rose to go. I bid him good-night a little sadly.

His sensitiveness—that peculiar, apprehensive, detective faculty of his—felt in a moment the unspoken complaint, the scarce-thought reproach. He asked quietly if I was offended. I shook my head, as implying a negative.

“Permit me, then, to speak a little seriously to you before you go. You are in a highly nervous state. I feel sure from what is apparent in your look and manner, however well controlled, that whilst alone this evening in that dismal, perishing, sepulchral garret—that dungeon under the leads, smelling of damp and mould, rank with phthisis and catarrh, a place you never ought to enter—that you saw, or thought you saw, some appearance peculiarly calculated to impress the imagination. I know that you are not, nor ever were, subject to material terrors, fears of robbers, etc; I am not so sure that a visitation, bearing a spectral character, would not shake your very mind. Be calm now. This is all a matter of the nerves, I see; but just specify the vision.”

“You will tell nobody?”

“Nobody—most certainly. You may trust me as implicitly as you did Père Silas. Indeed, the doctor is perhaps the safer confessor of the two, though he has not gray hair.”

“You will not laugh?”

“Perhaps I may, to do you good; but not in scorn. Lucy, I feel as a friend towards you, though your timid nature is slow to trust.”