“My eyes are dim with childish tears, My heart is idly stirred, For the same sound is in my ears Which in those days I heard.” That suggestion of Cuthbert Ramsay’s of latent madness in the lodge-keeper came upon Theodore like a flash of lurid light, and gave a new colour to all his thoughts. It was in vain that his friend reminded him of the wide distinction between the fury of the homicidal lunatic and the settled melancholy of a mind warped by misfortune. After that conversation in the Park he was haunted by Mrs. Porter’s image, and he found his mind distracted between two opposite ideas; one pointing to the man who had claimed Mrs. Danvers as his wife, the deserted and betrayed husband of James Dalbrook’s mistress; the other dwelling upon the image of this woman living at his kinsman’s gate, with an existence which was unsatisfactorily explained by the scanty facts which he had been able to gather about her former history. He recalled her conduct about her daughter, her cold and almost vindictive rejection of the penitent sinner; her stern resolve to stand alone in the world. Was that madness, or the consciousness of guilt, or what? It was conduct too unnatural to be accounted for easily, consider it how he might. He had heard often enough of fathers refusing to be reconciled with erring or disobedient children. The flinty hardness of the father’s heart has become proverbial. But an unforgiving mother seems an anomaly in nature. He determined upon confiding Ramsay’s opinion and his own doubts to Lord Cheriton without delay. Whatever abnormal circumstances there had been in Mrs. Porter’s history, her benefactor was likely to be acquainted with them; and if those circumstances had affected her intellect it was vital that he should be made aware of the fact before evil of any kind could arise. He contrived an after-dinner stroll upon the terrace with his kinsman as upon the previous evening, and entered upon the subject without loss of time. “Ramsay and I took our afternoon-tea with Mrs. Porter,” he said. “Indeed! How did that come about? She is not a sociable person in a general way, or accessible to strangers.” “It was to gratify a fancy of Ramsay’s that I went there. He admired her cottage and was interested in her history, and took it into his head that she was a woman of exceptional character.” “He was not far wrong there, I believe. Mrs. Porter is a very hard nut to crack. I have never been able to fathom her.” “And yet with your knowledge of her previous history you must have the safest clue to her character.” “I don’t know about that. There is nothing exceptional in her history—and there is much that is exceptional in her character, as your friend says. Pray what was the result of his observation of the lady in the leisure of afternoon tea-drinking?” “He believed that he saw the traces of madness in her countenance and manner; madness either past, present, or impending. He could not decide which.”