He addressed us all, but he looked especially at Laura.

She had learnt to feel my dread of offending him, and she accepted his proposal.  It was more than I could have done at that moment.  I could not have sat down at the same table with him for any consideration.  His eyes seemed to reach my inmost soul through the thickening obscurity of the twilight.  His voice trembled along every nerve in my body, and turned me hot and cold alternately.  The mystery and terror of my dream, which had haunted me at intervals all through the evening, now oppressed my mind with an unendurable foreboding and an unutterable awe.  I saw the white tomb again, and the veiled woman rising out of it by Hartright’s side.  The thought of Laura welled up like a spring in the depths of my heart, and filled it with waters of bitterness, never, never known to it before.  I caught her by the hand as she passed me on her way to the table, and kissed her as if that night was to part us for ever.  While they were all gazing at me in astonishment, I ran out through the low window which was open before me to the ground—­ran out to hide from them in the darkness, to hide even from myself.

We separated that evening later than usual.  Towards mid-night the summer silence was broken by the shuddering of a low, melancholy wind among the trees.  We all felt the sudden chill in the atmosphere, but the Count was the first to notice the stealthy rising of the wind.  He stopped while he was lighting my candle for me, and held up his hand warningly—­

“Listen!” he said.  “There will be a change to-morrow.”

VII

June 19th.—­The events of yesterday warned me to be ready, sooner or later, to meet the worst.  To-day is not yet at an end, and the worst has come.

Judging by the closest calculation of time that Laura and I could make, we arrived at the conclusion that Anne Catherick must have appeared at the boat-house at half-past two o’clock on the afternoon of yesterday.  I accordingly arranged that Laura should just show herself at the luncheon-table to-day, and should then slip out at the first opportunity, leaving me behind to preserve appearances, and to follow her as soon as I could safely do so.  This mode of proceeding, if no obstacles occurred to thwart us, would enable her to be at the boat-house before half-past two, and (when I left the table, in my turn) would take me to a safe position in the plantation before three.

The change in the weather, which last night’s wind warned us to expect, came with the morning.  It was raining heavily when I got up, and it continued to rain until twelve o’clock—­when the clouds dispersed, the blue sky appeared, and the sun shone again with the bright promise of a fine afternoon.

My anxiety to know how Sir Percival and the Count would occupy the early part of the day was by no means set at rest, so far as Sir Percival was concerned, by his leaving us immediately after breakfast, and going out by himself, in spite of the rain.  He neither told us where he was going nor when we might expect him back.  We saw him pass the breakfast-room window hastily, with his high boots and his waterproof coat on—­and that was all.