But in proportion as Glyndon shunned those excitements by which he had so long sought to occupy his time or distract his thoughts, the gloom of his calmer hours became deeper and more continuous.  He ever and especially dreaded to be alone; he could not bear his new companion to be absent from his eyes:  he rode with her, walked with her, and it was with visible reluctance, which almost partook of horror, that he retired to rest at an hour when even revel grows fatigued.  This gloom was not that which could be called by the soft name of melancholy,—­it was far more intense; it seemed rather like despair.  Often after a silence as of death—­so heavy, abstracted, motionless, did it appear—­he would start abruptly, and cast hurried glances around him,—­his limbs trembling, his lips livid, his brows bathed in dew.  Convinced that some secret sorrow preyed upon his mind, and would consume his health, it was the dearest as the most natural desire of Adela to become his confidant and consoler.  She observed, with the quick tact of the delicate, that he disliked her to seem affected by, or even sensible of, his darker moods.  She schooled herself to suppress her fears and her feelings.  She would not ask his confidence,—­she sought to steal into it.  By little and little she felt that she was succeeding.  Too wrapped in his own strange existence to be acutely observant of the character of others, Glyndon mistook the self-content of a generous and humble affection for constitutional fortitude; and this quality pleased and soothed him.  It is fortitude that the diseased mind requires in the confidant whom it selects as its physician.  And how irresistible is that desire to communicate!  How often the lonely man thought to himself, “My heart would be lightened of its misery, if once confessed!” He felt, too, that in the very youth, the inexperience, the poetical temperament of Adela, he could find one who would comprehend and bear with him better than any sterner and more practical nature.  Mervale would have looked on his revelations as the ravings of madness, and most men, at best, as the sicklied chimeras, the optical delusions, of disease.  Thus gradually preparing himself for that relief for which he yearned, the moment for his disclosure arrived thus:—­

One evening, as they sat alone together, Adela, who inherited some portion of her brother’s talent in art, was employed in drawing, and Glyndon, rousing himself from meditations less gloomy than usual, rose, and affectionately passing his arm round her waist, looked over her as she sat.  An exclamation of dismay broke from his lips,—­he snatched the drawing from her hand:  “What are you about?—­what portrait is this?”

“Dear Clarence, do you not remember the original?—­it is a copy from that portrait of our wise ancestor which our poor mother used to say so strongly resembled you.  I thought it would please you if I copied it from memory.”

“Accursed was the likeness!” said Glyndon, gloomily.  “Guess you not the reason why I have shunned to return to the home of my fathers!—­because I dreaded to meet that portrait!—­because—­because—­but pardon me; I alarm you!”