“I vowed, sir, then, to dismiss all memory of such unhappy deeds from mind—­never to speak again that broken lady’s name.  Oh!  I have seen sad ends—­pride abased, splendour dismantled, courage to terror come, guilt to a crying guilelessness.”

“‘Guilelessness?’” I said.  “Lady Macbeth at least was past all changing.”

The doctor stood up and cast a deep scrutiny on me, which yet, perhaps, was partly on himself.

“Perceive, sir,” he said, “this table—­broader, longer, splendidly burdened; and all adown both sides the board, thanes and their ladies, lords, and gentlemen, guests bidden to a royal banquet.  ’Twas then in that bleak and dismal country—­the Palace of Forres.  Torches flared in the hall; to every man a servant or two:  we sat in pomp.”

He paused again, and gravely withdrew behind the tapestry.

“And presently,” he cried therefrom, suiting his action to the word, “to the blast of hautboys enters the king in state thus, with his attendant lords.  And with all that rich and familiar courtesy of which he was master in his easier moods he passed from one to another, greeting with supple dignity on his way, till he came at last softly to the place prepared for him at table.  And suddenly—­shall I ever forget, it, sir?—­it seemed silence ran like a flame from mouth to mouth as there he stood, thus, marble-still, his eyes fixed in a leaden glare.  And he raised his face and looked once round on us all with a forlorn astonishment and wrath, like one with a death-wound—­I never saw the like of such a face.

“Whereat, beseeching us to be calm, and pay no heed, the queen laid her hand on his and called him.  And his orbs rolled down once more upon the empty place, and stuck as if at grapple with some horror seen within.  He muttered aloud in peevish altercation—­once more to heave up his frame, to sigh and shake himself, and lo!—­”

The viol-strings rang to his “lo!”

“Lo, sir, the Unseen had conquered.  His lip sagged into his beard, he babbled with open mouth, and leaned on his lady with such an impotent and slavish regard as I hope never to see again man pay to woman....  We thought no more of supper after that....

“But what do I—?” The doctor laid a cautioning finger on his mouth.

“The company was dispersed, the palace gloomy with night (and they were black nights at Forres!), and on the walls I heard the sentinel’s replying....  In the wood’s last glow I entered and stood in his self-same station before the empty stool.  And even as I stood thus, my hair creeping, my will concentred, gazing with every cord at stretch, fell a light, light footfall behind me.”  He glanced whitely over his shoulder.

“Sir, it was the queen come softly out of slumber on my own unquiet errand.”

The doctor strode to the door, and peered out like a man suspicious or guilty of treachery.  It was indeed a house of broken silences.  And there, in the doorway, he seemed to be addressing his own saddened conscience.