In the course of the day, Euphra took an opportunity of whispering to him: 

“Not in my room —­ in the library.”  I presume she thought it would be more prudent, in the case of any interruption.

After dinner that evening, Hugh did not go to the drawingroom with Mr. Arnold, but out into the woods about the house.  It was early in the twilight; for now the sun set late.  The month was June; and the even a rich, dreamful, rosy even —­ the sleep of a gorgeous day.  “It is like the soul of a gracious woman,” thought Hugh, charmed into a lucid interval of passion by the loveliness of the nature around him.  Strange to tell, at that moment, instead of the hushed gloom of the library, towards which he was hoping and leaning in his soul, there arose before him the bare, stern, leafless pine-wood —­ for who can call its foliage leaves? —­ with the chilly wind of a northern spring morning blowing through it with a wailing noise of waters; and beneath a weird fir-tree, lofty, gaunt, and huge, with bare goblin arms, contorted sweepily, in a strange mingling of the sublime and the grotesque —­ beneath this fir-tree, Margaret sitting on one of its twisted roots, the very image of peace, with a face that seemed stilled by the expected approach of a sacred and unknown gladness; a face that would blossom the more gloriously because its joy delayed its coming.  And above it, the tree shone a “still,” almost “awful red,” in the level light of the morning.

The vision came and passed, for he did not invite its stay:  it rebuked him to the deepest soul.  He strayed in troubled pleasure, restless and dissatisfied.  Woods of the richest growth were around him; heaps on heaps of leaves floating above him like clouds, a trackless wilderness of airy green, wherein one might wish to dwell for ever, looking down into the vaults and aisles of the long-ranging boles beneath.  But no peace could rest on his face; only, at best, a false mask, put on to hide the trouble of the unresting heart.  Had he been doing his duty to Harry, his love for Euphra, however unworthy she might be, would not have troubled him thus.

He came upon an avenue.  At the further end the boughs of the old trees, bare of leaves beneath, met in a perfect pointed arch, across which were barred the lingering colours of the sunset, transforming the whole into a rich window full of stained glass and complex tracery, closing up a Gothic aisle in a temple of everlasting worship.  A kind of holy calm fell upon him as he regarded the dim, dying colours; and the spirit of the night, a something that is neither silence nor sound, and yet is like both, sank into his soul, and made a moment of summer twilight there.  He walked along the avenue for some distance; and then, leaving it, passed on through the woods. —­ Suddenly it flashed upon him that he had crossed the Ghost’s Walk.  A slight but cold shudder passed through the region of his heart.  Then he laughed at himself, and, as it were in despite of his own tremor, turned, and crossed yet again the path of the ghost.