“No, no, ’tis nothing,” she replied, and avoiding the outstretched hand with a shudder, she took the seat furthest away from her father and lover.

They looked at her in amazement, and she at them in fear and trembling.  She was conscious of two very distinct sensations—­one the result of reason, the other of madness.  She was not ignorant of the causes of each, although she was powerless to repress one in favour of the other.  Both struggled for mastery and for the moment without disturbing the equipoise.  On the side of reason she knew very well she was looking at and talking to her dear, kind father, and that the young man sitting next him was John Norton, the son of her dear friend, Mrs Norton; she knew he was the young man who loved her, and whom she was going to marry, marry, marry.  On the other side she saw that her father’s kind benign countenance was not a real face, but a mask which he wore over another face, and which, should the mask slip—­and she prayed that it might not—­would prove as horrible and revolting as—­

But the mask John wore was as nothing, it was the veriest make believe.  And she could not but doubt now but that the face she had known him so long by was a fictitious face, and as the hallucination strengthened, she saw his large mild eyes grow small, and that vague dreamy look turn to the dull liquorish look, the chin came forward, the brows contracted ... the large sinewy hands were, oh, so like!  Then reason asserted itself; the vision vanished, and she saw John Norton as she had always seen him.

But was she sure that she did?  Yes, yes—­she must not give way.  But her head seemed to be growing lighter, and she did not appear to be able to judge things exactly as she should; a sort of new world seemed to be slipping like a painted veil between her and the old.  She must resist.

John and Mr Hare looked at her.

John at length rose, and advancing to her, said, “My dear Kitty, I am afraid you are not well....”

She strove to allow him to take her hand, but she could not overcome the instinctive feeling which, against her will, caused her to shrink from him.

“Oh, don’t come near me, I cannot bear it!” she cried, “don’t come near me, I beg of you.”

More than this she could not do, and giving way utterly, she shrieked and rushed from the room.  She rushed upstairs.  She stood in the middle of the floor listening to the silence, her thoughts falling about her like shaken leaves.  It was as if a thunderbolt had destroyed the world, and left her alone in a desert.  The furniture of the room, the bed, the chairs, the books she loved, seemed to have become as grains of sand, and she forgot all connection between them and herself.  She pressed her hands to her forehead, and strove to separate the horror that crowded upon her.  But all was now one horror—­the lonely hills were in the room, the grey sky, the green furze, the tramp; she was again fighting furiously with him; and her lover and her father and all sense of the world’s life grew dark in the storm of madness.  Suddenly she felt something on her neck.  She put her hand up ...