He was holding his tea-cup. His hand trembled slightly at this moment, and the china rattled. He set the cup down on the small table before him. "You said," observed Chichester--toward whom Lady Sophia immediately turned, with an almost rapt air--"that it suggested some curious speculations to your mind. I should very much like to know what they were." "One was this. Suppose the man in the garden, who looked in upon his double, had not fled away. Suppose he had had the courage to remain, and, in hiding--for the sake of argument we may assume the situation to be possible--" "Ah, indeed! And why not?" interrupted Chichester. His voice, profoundly melancholy, fell like a weight upon those who heard him. And again Malling thought of him almost as some one set apart from his fellows by some mysterious knowledge, some heavy burthen of truth. "--and in hiding had watched the life of his double. I sat up speculating what effect such an observation, terrible no doubt and grotesque, would be likely to have on the soul of the watching man. But there was another speculation with which I entertained my mind that night." "Let us have it," said Chichester, leaning forward, and, with the gesture characteristic of him, dropping his hands down between his knees. "Let us have it." "Suppose the man to remain and, in hiding, to watch the life of his double, what effect would such an observation be likely to have upon the double?" Malling paused. The rector, with an almost violent movement of his big hand and arm, took his cup from the table and drank his tea. "It didn't occur to you, I suppose, when composing your sermon to follow that train of thought?" said Malling to Chichester. "No," replied the curate, slowly, and like one thinking profoundly. "I was too engrossed with the feelings of the man. But, then, you thought of the double as a living man, with all the sensations of a man?" "That was your fault," said Malling. "His fault!" said Lady Sophia, with a sort of latent sharpness, and laying an emphasis on the second word. "Certainly; for making the narrative so vital and human." He addressed himself again to the curate. "Did you not give to the double the attributes of a man? Did you not make his wife come to bid him good night, bend down to kiss him, waft him a characteristic farewell?" "It is true. I did," said Chichester, still speaking like a man in deep thought. "That was the most terrible part of all," said Lady Sophia. In her voice there was an accent almost of horror. "It sickened me to the soul," she continued--"the idea of a woman bidding a tender good night to an apparition." "I took it as a man," said Malling. They had all three, strangely, left the rector out of this discussion, and he seemed willing that it should be so. He now sat back in his chair listening to all that was being said, somewhat as he had listened to the sermon of Chichester, in a sort of ghastly silence.