The first sick leap of the heart was past.  What he saw, he knew, was a mere effect of light and shadow and tragically heightened fancy:  when he moved in a certain direction, the dim picture faded, broke into pieces, was gone; but lean far back in the settle, look out with eyes of one awakened from a maze of fearful dreams, and there it was again!  He had no terror of it; what was it at last but the projection of a face and form with which his mind had long—­had long been occupied?  It had ousted the vision of his father; and that, too, was not strange, seeing that, day by day, the thought of the one—­the one—­the one had grown more and yet more insistent.  “Cary,” said Rand, in a hollow voice, “Cary!”

The light and shadow made no answer.  Rand waited, gazing with some fixedness, and imagination at white heat saw the head, the face, the form, the quiet dress, the whole air of the man, the look within his eyes and the smile upon his lips.  The figure sat at ease, as of old it had sat upon the Justice’s Bench the day of the election, as it had sat beside the bed in the blue room at Fontenoy.  Imagination laid Lewis Rand again in that room, showed him the mandarin screen, the sunny, happy morning, the pansies in the bowl.  “If,” he cried,—­“if I had died then, I had not died a wicked man.  Cary—­Cary—­Cary!  I am in torment!”

There came no reply.  Rand bowed his head.  Without, in the afternoon sky, a cloud hid the sun.  When the solitary man in the deserted house looked again, there were no shafts of light, no dark between to create illusion; all was even dusk, forbidding, grey, and cold.  He rose from the settle and left the room and the house.  Selim whinnied at the gate, and his master, coming swiftly down the path and out of the enclosure, unknotted the reins, mounted, and rode off at speed.

Rand’s haste did not hold.  Remorse does not necessarily break habit, and the habit of his lifetime was attention to detail, system in matters of business, scrupulous response to the call where he acknowledged the right.  He drew rein at Mrs. Selden’s, dismounted, and lifted the knocker.

Cousin Jane Selden herself met him in the hail.  “Lewis!  I’m as glad to see you as if you brought the south wind!  Come in to the fire, and I’ll ring for cake and wine.  It is bitter weather even for January.  All’s well at Roselands?”

“All’s well.”

They entered the small parlour and sat down before the fire.  “I saw Jacqueline,” continued Mrs. Selden, “at church last Sunday.  I thought her looking very badly pale and absent.  I know, Lewis Rand, that you love each other dearly.  There has been no quarrel?”

“No quarrel.”

“I don’t know,” quoth Mrs. Selden, “of which I’m most sensible when it’s in the air—­an east wind or something amiss.  The wind’s in the north to-day, but the latter’s on my mind.  What is wrong, Lewis?”

“My dear old friend, what should be wrong?”