The hall was quiet and dim. Somewhere a large clock was ticking. Now and then I heard a carriage roll by outside. As I sat there I fell into deep thought. What was I going to do? I had come to the house without making any plan. I could not make any plan till I had seen Vernon. His demeanour, his action, must guide me. Would he see me? I thought it probable. There was evidently no one with him. Had there been, Cragg would have told me; and, if I saw him, should I find the black spaniel with him? I glanced round me. On the opposite side of the hall, close to where I was sitting, opened the short corridor, or passage, which linked the two houses in one. I could see the darkness of what had been Deeming’s house where the passage stretched away beyond the door of Vernon’s workroom. Poor Deeming! Gone, with all his fine abilities, his energy, his persistence, his ambition—his cruelty, perhaps! Had he been cruel? Possibly Vernon knew. If he had, he was perhaps now being punished in that other mysterious world of which we know nothing, of which we seldom think in health, but which seems to loom near us when we are ill, or weary, or in trouble of mind—to loom as a great vault before whose entrance we stand, gazing but seeing naught. As I stared down the corridor into the dimness of the other house, the thought of Deeming haunted me, came to me vividly, till I almost fancied that something of him, some thrown-out essence of his personality, of his strong soul, still remained in the dwelling that had been his, still knew what went on there, still watched the coming and going of the man who governed where he had governed once. I fancied, did I say? It was more than that. I felt as if he were near me, as if he were even intent upon me.