"'Twould be hard if you could not come to your own house, my lord," answered the old man quietly, looking up with luminous dark eyes which seemed all the more brilliant because of the snowy whiteness of the thick eyebrows and the long, drooping locks which fell over the forehead. "I will own that solitude and silence have been very precious to me in this noble old mansion. Yes, silence is a priceless boon to the searcher. In the silence of the living we can feel the companionship of the dead." Those last words had a subduing effect upon Lavendale. He laid aside hat and whip, came slowly across the room, and seated himself opposite the Italian. "You have felt the influence of those who have gone before," he said; "of the dead who once lived and loved, and were glad and sorry, in this house." "Yes, there never was yet an old house that was not eloquent with spirit voices. There is one gentle shade that has been near me often in these old rooms of yours--a tender, mournful soul, over-charged with sorrow." "It is so easy for you to say these things," said Lavendale doubtingly. "You have heard me talk of my mother so often." "You questioned and I answered," replied the old man. "If it please you to think me a charlatan, you are welcome to your opinion. I have neither gain nor honour to win from you or any man living. K I have my ends and aims, which neither you nor mortal man can aid. If I fail or if I succeed, I do it alone. Human clay cannot help me." "Why should this house in which I was born have voices which you can hear, and yet for me hold only silence--for me who love every stone in the fabric, for me who have wept the most passionate tears in my life for her I lost here?" "Because between the disembodied soul and you there is the barrier of the flesh; because you have given yourself up to sensuous things and sensuous pleasures; have eaten and drunk and delighted in the lowest pleasures of your kind. How should such as you hope to hold communion with the clear light of the soul released from clay? You must bring yourself nearer the condition of the dead before you can feel their influence." "Sublimise myself by the extinguishment of every earthly passion? Nay, my ethereal friend, at two-and-thirty that is not so easy. There is something here," lightly touching his breast, "which pleads too ardently for poor humanity--the heart, Vincenti, the passionate heart of manhood. Do not believe those who tell you that the bad Lord Lavendale has been altogether the slave of his senses. I never loved but once with true fervour. All the rest has been vanity and confusion, the follies of a fop who wanted to lead the fashion, and ever to be first in depravity." "You have been staunch in friendship," said Vincenti: "I can answer for that. It was a happy hour for me when you found me laid up with fever at an inn at Prague. In a situation which would have made any other Englishman shun me, you succoured and rescued me."