my library one January evening--sitting in the leather chair that used to
be my father's--when Bertha appeared at the door, with a candle in her
hand, and advanced towards me. I knew the ball-dress she had on--the
white ball-dress, with the green jewels, shone upon by the light of the
wax candle which lit up the medallion of the dying Cleopatra on the
mantelpiece. Why did she come to me before going out? I had not seen
her in the library, which was my habitual place for months. Why did she
stand before me with the candle in her hand, with her cruel contemptuous
eyes fixed on me, and the glittering serpent, like a familiar demon, on
her breast? For a moment I thought this fulfilment of my vision at
Vienna marked some dreadful crisis in my fate, but I saw nothing in
Bertha's mind, as she stood before me, except scorn for the look of
overwhelming misery with which I sat before her . . . "Fool, idiot, why
don't you kill yourself, then?"--that was her thought. But at length her
thoughts reverted to her errand, and she spoke aloud. The apparently
indifferent nature of the errand seemed to make a ridiculous anticlimax
to my prevision and my agitation.

"I have had to hire a new maid. Fletcher is going to be married, and she
wants me to ask you to let her husband have the public-house and farm at
Molton. I wish him to have it. You must give the promise now, because
Fletcher is going to-morrow morning--and quickly, because I'm in a
hurry."

"Very well; you may promise her," I said, indifferently, and Bertha swept
out of the library again.

I always shrank from the sight of a new person, and all the more when it
was a person whose mental life was likely to weary my reluctant insight
with worldly ignorant trivialities. But I shrank especially from the