‘You will think me more of an ass than you do already,’ he replied. ‘I suppose it must be my mother’s stories that account for it. But, besides the awful smell of burning here, I seem to see a horrible wreckage of charred ruins. Oh, I can see these walls and all the jolly decorations. And yet, somehow, when I look again they are not there any longer. There is only the shell of some other building, something all fallen in and blistered and blackened with fire. Great heaps of ashes and bleached rubbish are piled high between what is left of the walls. The whole place is choking with the stale fumes of smoke. And the rooms are open to the grey sky far overhead; and grey drifts of rain come dashing in from time to time on the smouldering masses.’ Kingston watched his visitor’s face with an amazement that bereft him of words. ‘By God!’ he said slowly, wondering where his thoughts would lead him in the next few minutes. ‘By God! you describe it exactly as if you had been here twenty years ago.’ Ivor Restormel shook his head fiercely, as if trying to shake off some horrid, persistent memory. ‘I feel as if I had,’ he replied suddenly. ‘I feel just as if I had been here twenty years ago, worse luck. The moment I came into the room I saw it all. I felt--oh, well, I felt that I must have been here in the ruins ever so long ago, and had the worst time here that anyone ever had--as if I had been tied by the leg here, somehow, and pinned down in damnable terror and pain.’ ‘Come along out of it,’ said Kingston quietly, after a pause. He dared not trust himself to say more. An idea had been born in his brain--born, or called once more to life?--an idea so wild, so fantastic, that he hardly dared to entertain it. And yet, in the depths of his heart, he knew that it was the truth. In silence he led the way towards the Castle, while his visitor tried to impress upon his unheeding ears a dozen apologies for the gross and idiotic folly of which his nerves had made him guilty. As soon as he was out of the fateful room all his self-possession seemed to have returned, and he could not account for the sudden vertigo of terror that had haunted him there. What had come over him he could not imagine. Mr. Darnley must certainly think him the most confounded idiot. What must Mr. Darnley think of anyone who could let himself be made such a rude, mannerless idiot of by a sort of hysterical schoolgirl qualm? The whole thing was too asinine for words. He had no excuse to make.