All that night, the story swam in his brain, and rising early next morning, he resolved—or rather was impelled—to commence writing it immediately. He did so, and in the full light of day the wraith of Udalrico Verga stood beside him, and he plainly saw it, during the whole time his pen was at work. But the vision had no longer any weakening or retarding effect upon his brain; rather its effects were quickening and coercive; and these effects increased, till it became a certainty to him that from the visible presence of the spirit of Verga he drew the main strength of his inspiration. The story grew under his pen to an elaborate romance, upon which, sustained throughout by an elation of mind that allowed little repose to the body, he was at work during many weeks. In all this time, he never passed beyond the grounds of the villa, and when, by-and-bye, his face began to show marks of the mental and bodily stress to which his task subjected him, the peasant people of the town, who saw him walking in the garden sometimes of an evening, used to say: “There is the English signor who went to live in the Villa Torcello eleven weeks ago; he used to go out every day, but it is nine weeks since he passed the gate. He cannot get out any more. He has seen the ghost of the Signor Verga, and it keeps him there. He grows like a ghost himself.” But the story was finished at length, and Gaston sent the manuscript to his publishers in London. The ghost of Verga, which had remained visibly before him during the whole period of composition, vanished on the day the work was ended, and was never seen by him again. He went out every day as he had done formerly, and exercise brought back the colour to his face, and restored the tone of his mind. At this time he thought no more about the story than that it was a strange one, which had come to him in a strange manner, and that it ought to bring him the fame in fiction which he coveted. A letter from Sir Selwyn, in which he said that he was on the point of starting for home, determined Gaston to return thither at once, that he might have everything in readiness for his father’s coming. On the evening before his departure, while sorting a bundle of papers, he came upon a portion of manuscript of his story which he remembered having set aside as needing to be re-cast. He took it up and began to read it. The tragedy which formed the climax of the romance, had this feature, that the man who was murdered had (unconsciously, and by a singular operation of fate) planned his own death in planning that of the friend whom he falsely believed to have betrayed him in love. The chapter upon which Gaston had lighted, was devoted to a minute analysis of the character of the man whom blind force of circumstance had driven to an act of murder which his affection for its victim had rendered abhorrent in the highest degree.