As she spoke, a girl came in with the snuffer-tray and candles. She was pale and tall and of a tempting shape. Beautiful she was not, yet the sad strangeness of her face impressed me more than great beauty would have done. Her eyes were like the other woman’s, but clearer and more expressive; her lips were quaintly arched; long yellow hair hung down her back. She seemed, although she walked erect, to be recovering from some violent illness. When she had gone the hostess spoke again. ‘My niece is not strong,’ she said, laying an unnecessary emphasis on the word _niece_. ‘The air does not suit her.’ ‘Was not she bred in the country?’ I inquired. ‘Ah, no! She is not without money--her father endowed her well. Until two years back she was at the convent of the Sisters of Saint Vincent de Paul for her education. ’Tis in the hill-country, and I think that coming to the flatness of Gardomwood has done her harm.’ The girl came in again: this time I noted her grace of movement; it had something of the wearied goddess. ‘Aunt,’ she said quietly, ‘I wish to go into the woods--you can spare me? All I had to do is done; the women are sewing in the kitchen.’ She went to the further end of the room, where a cloak of rose-coloured silk hung, ermine-lined, from a nail in the panelling. She donned it at her leisure; her long and narrow hands were of a perfect colour. She tied the broad ribands of the collar; she lighted two candles that hung before a tarnished mirror, and gazed at her shadow; then, her lips moving silently, she left the room. ‘Ever the same,’ the elder woman said. ‘Night after night does she leave the house and travel about like an aimless thing. Come back, Dinah,’ she called, ‘come back.’ But the thin voice went wavering through the empty passages unanswered. So the hostess rose and with a half-apologetic ‘Good-night,’ left me alone. I sat down in the deep recess of the window behind a heavy curtain. A copy of Denis Diderot’s _Religieuse_ lay on the little table. I took it up, and was soon engrossed in it: for of all books this is the most fascinating, the most disappointing, the most grim. A light came glimmering at the end of the vista before me: it grew and grew, and the moon uplifted herself waist-high above the trees. And when I had watched her thus far, I returned to my nun and reached page twenty-two of the second volume, where I read the following sentence: ‘After a few flourishes she played some things, foolish, wild, and incoherent as her own ideas, but through all the defects of her execution I saw she had a touch infinitely superior to mine.’ Then in the shaded window-seat I fell asleep....