“I hit the mark when I said you were dreaming, Hamlet,” he said. “It has often happened to me to continue thinking after dropping asleep, and nice bathos the thoughts are!” He dismissed the matter as a joke; but it was no joke to me. I was bewildered. When I think of it now the bewilderment is greater, the sense of confused perceptions more alarming. During the talk which followed, I tried to gain a clue to the strange lady I met in the grounds. I casually alluded to the asylum in the neighbourhood, and asked if the authorities there were not almost lax in their vigilance. “I cannot help thinking that I met an escaped madwoman, when I was taking a walk early this morning,” I said. “She looked, and I think must be, insane.” “You could not have met a lady patient of Dr. Walters’, my dear Hamlet,” said Sir Roderick. I asked, “Why not?” “For a very good reason, the best of reasons,” he replied: “he hasn’t any. He only takes men. In which, I may add, he shows his wisdom, for female lunatics are the most disgusting creatures on earth. Pah! let us change the subject.” I was only too glad. But I was not in the least fit for a scientific discussion with my host. I felt a dread gradually investing me—a dread lest I should find that the deserted spot the strange lady dragged me to last night actually existed in the grounds. If I should come upon it just as it was, I should believe in my adventure as a fact. In that case, how about the missing chapter “On the Age of Souls”? For if my adventure actually happened, I was not asleep and dreaming immediately beforehand; at all events, it was extremely improbable that I was. I was getting considerably strung up, when a tap came at the door, and Lilia came in, fresh, sweet in her muslin summer dress, like Dawn dispelling the dismal darkness of my thoughts. “A quarter-past ten, and service begins at eleven,” she said. “And it is about seven minutes’ walk to the church. Sit down, we are talking,” said Sir Roderick, dictatorially. She looked wistfully at me. “I thought you wanted to see the grounds,” she said. “So I do, very much indeed,” I said. My host did not look best pleased. He little knew what was in my mind. Nor did she, sweet girl, as we started; and she would stop here and there to show me some choice foreign shrub or some new plant, or the view from this or that particular spot. All the time I was wondering how I should introduce the subject of the neglected plateau with the broken-down fountain. The opportunity came. “Your father does not allow any part of his shrubberies to run wild,” I said; “but I fancied I saw a wild-looking spot among the pines, where there were neglected flower-beds and the grass was unmown.” She shook her head. “I don’t know of any place about like that,” she said, reflectively. “No! I am sure that none of the flower-beds have weeds. Papa hates weeds: and weeding gives employment to people who cannot do much else.”