Solution for the events of the night he could find none.  He racked his imagination in vain to find some means, however vague, of endeavouring to account for what occurred, and still he was at fault.  All was to him wrapped in the gloom of the most profound mystery.

And how strangely, too, the eyes of that portrait appeared to look upon him—­as if instinct with life, and as if the head to which they belonged was busy in endeavouring to find out the secret communings of his soul.  It was wonderfully well executed that portrait; so life-like, that the very features seemed to move as you gazed upon them.

“It shall be removed,” said Henry.  “I would remove it now, but that it seems absolutely painted on the panel, and I should awake Flora in any attempt to do so.”

He arose and ascertained that such was the case, and that it would require a workman, with proper tools adapted to the job, to remove the portrait.

“True,” he said, “I might now destroy it, but it is a pity to obscure a work of such rare art as this is; I should blame myself if I were.  It shall be removed to some other room of the house, however.”

Then, all of a sudden, it struck Henry how foolish it would be to remove the portrait from the wall of a room which, in all likelihood, after that night, would be uninhabited; for it was not probable that Flora would choose again to inhabit a chamber in which she had gone through so much terror.

“It can be left where it is,” he said, “and we can fasten up, if we please, even the very door of this room, so that no one need trouble themselves any further about it.”

The morning was now coming fast, and just as Henry thought he would partially draw a blind across the window, in order to shield from the direct rays of the sun the eyes of Flora, she awoke.

“Help—­help!” she cried, and Henry was by her side in a moment.

“You are safe, Flora—­you are safe,” he said.

“Where is it now?” she said.

“What—­what, dear Flora?”

“The dreadful apparition.  Oh, what have I done to be made thus perpetually miserable?”

“Think no more of it, Flora.”

“I must think.  My brain is on fire!  A million of strange eyes seem gazing on me.”

“Great Heaven! she raves,” said Henry.

“Hark—­hark—­hark!  He comes on the wings of the storm.  Oh, it is most horrible—­horrible!”

Henry rang the bell, but not sufficiently loudly to create any alarm.  The sound reached the waking ear of the mother, who in a few moments was in the room.

“She has awakened,” said Henry, “and has spoken, but she seems to me to wander in her discourse.  For God’s sake, soothe her, and try to bring her mind round to its usual state.”

“I will, Henry—­I will.”

“And I think, mother, if you were to get her out of this room, and into some other chamber as far removed from this one as possible, it would tend to withdraw her mind from what has occurred.”