Mrs Herbert attended me during the forenoon, but left me after my early dinner. I made my tea for myself, and a tankard filled from a barrel of ale of my uncle’s brewing, with a piece of bread and cheese, was my unvarying supper. The first night I felt very lonely, almost indeed what the Scotch call _eerie_. The place, although inseparably interwoven with my earliest recollections, drew back and stood apart from me--a thing to be thought about; and, in the ancient house, amidst the lonely field, I felt like a ghost condemned to return and live the vanished time over again. I had had a fire lighted in my own room; for, although the air was warm outside, the thick stone walls seemed to retain the chilly breath of the last Winter. The silent rooms that filled the house forced the sense of their presence upon me. I seemed to see the forsaken things in them staring at each other, hopeless and useless, across the dividing space, as if saying to themselves, ‘We belong to the dead, are mouldering to the dust after them, and in the dust alone we meet.’ From the vacant rooms my soul seemed to float out beyond, searching still--to find nothing but loneliness and emptiness betwixt me and the stars; and beyond the stars more loneliness and more emptiness still--no rest for the sole of the foot of the wandering Psyche--save--one mighty saving--an exception which, if true, must be the one all-absorbing rule. ‘But,’ I was saying to myself, ‘love unknown is not even equal to love lost,’ when my reverie was broken by the dull noise of a horse’s hoofs upon the sward. I rose and went to the window. As I crossed the room, my brain rather than myself suddenly recalled the night when my pendulum drew from the churning trees the unwelcome genius of the storm. The moment I reached the window--there through the dim Summer twilight, once more from the trees, now as still as sleep, came the same figure. Mr Coningham saw me at the fire-lighted window, and halted. ‘May I be admitted?’ he asked ceremoniously. I made a sign to him to ride round to the door, for I could not speak aloud: it would have been rude to the memories that haunted the silent house. ‘May I come in for a few minutes, Mr Cumbermede?’ he asked again, already at the door by the time I had opened it. ‘By all means, Mr Coningham,’ I replied. ‘Only you must tie your horse to this ring, for we--I--have no stable here.’ ‘I’ve done this before,’ he answered, as he made the animal fast. ‘I know the ways of the place well enough. But surely you’re not here in absolute solitude?’ ‘Yes, I am. I prefer being alone at present.’ ‘Very unhealthy, I must say! You will grow hypochondriacal if you mope in this fashion,’ he returned, following me up-stairs to my room. ‘A day or two of solitude now and then would, I suspect, do most people more good than harm,’ I answered. ‘But you must not think I intend leading a hermit’s life. Have you heard that my aunt--?’