'It is a disease of the mind, Ida; but all this seems so incomprehensible to me. Surely we have power and will over our own acts, and even in these days, when so much is said, thought, written--yes, and practised too, about spiritualism, mysticism, etc., there is the danger of adopting that as an _inevitable law_ to which we must conform, but which we should with all our power resist as the vilest of superstition.' Ida only shook her head mournfully, and poor Clare's motherly and sisterly heart was stirred within her. She knew not what to think; but she clung to the hope that ultimately a marriage with Jerry Vane would dissipate these morbid impressions with which the mind of Ida had become so singularly and so strongly imbued. But now, after this, rumours began to spread--though the strange man, if man he was, had disappeared, and was seen no more, but seemed to have taken his departure with Jerry Vane--rumours born of chance, remarks overheard by listening servants, and taken to the still-room, the kitchen, the stable court and gamekeeper's lodge, of spectral appearances in the rhododendron walk, in the arbour where the Psyche stood, and elsewhere about the ancient mansion, till at last, through Major Desmond, they actually reached the ears of Sir Carnaby Collingwood abroad, and though they excited the merriment and languid curiosity of Lady Evelyn, they caused him anger and annoyance, and not a little contempt: 'Such stories are such deuced bad form--get into the local papers, and all that sort of thing, don't you know.' One fact became pleasantly apparent to Clare ere long, that though Ida regretted the departure of Vane, and still more the inexplicable cause of their mutual coldness, her health for a time improved rapidly: the colour came back to her cheek, and the brightness to her eyes; she loved as of old to take her share in pleasures and amusements; and the chill shiver she had been wont to experience affected her less and less--but for a time only. CHAPTER XVIII. THE EMEUTE AT LUBECK. At the Stadt Hamburg Sir Carnaby and his bride probably secluded themselves in their own apartments on the day after the unpleasant rencontre related in Chapter XIV.; at least Trevor Chute saw nothing of them at the _table d'hôte_, which was filled by its usual frequenters, officers of the garrison, German Jews and Jewesses, and those whose names inevitably figure on the board in the hall as 'Grafs, Herrs, Rentiers, and Privatiers.'