Perhaps the sudden alteration observable in her countenance, as this
spectacle so unexpectedly encountered her, recalled him to himself; for
he added, hurriedly, and in a tone of gentler meaning--

"Rhoda, Rhoda, watch and pray. My daughter, my child! keep your heart
pure, and nothing bad can approach you for ill. No, no; you are good, and
the good need not fear!" Suddenly Marston burst into tears, as he ended this sentence, and
wept long and convulsively. She did not dare to speak, or even to
move; but after a while he ceased, appeared uneasy, half ashamed and
half angry; and looking with a horrified and bewildered glance into
her face, he said--

"Rhoda, child, what--what have I said? My God! what have I been saying? Did I--do I look ill? Oh, Rhoda, Rhoda, may you never feel this!" He turned away from her without awaiting her answer, and walked away
with the appearance of intense agitation, as if to leave her. He turned
again, however, and with a face pallid and sunken as death, approached
her slowly--

"Rhoda," said he, "don't tell what I have said to anyone--don't, I
conjure you, even to Charles. I speak too much at random, and say more
than I mean--a foolish, rambling habit: so do not repeat one word of it,
not one word to any living mortal. You and I, Rhoda, must have our
little secrets." He ended with an attempt at a smile, so obviously painful and
fear-stricken that as he walked hurriedly away, the astounded girl burst
into a bitter flood of tears. What was, what could be, the meaning of
the shocking scene she had then been forced to witness? She dared not
answer the question. Yet one ghastly doubt haunted her like her
shadow--a suspicion that the malignant and hideous light of madness was
already glaring upon his mind. As, leaning upon the arm of her
astonished attendant, she retracted her steps, the trees, the flowers,
the familiar hall-door, the echoing passages--every object that met her
eye--seemed strange and unsubstantial, and she gliding on among them in
a horrid dream. Time passed on: there was no renewal of the painful scene which dwelt so
sensibly in the affrighted imagination of Rhoda. Marston's manner was
changed towards her; he seemed shy, cowed, and uneasy in her presence,
and thenceforth she saw less than ever of him. Meanwhile the time
approached which was to witness the long expected, and, by Rhoda, the
intensely prayed for arrival of her brother. Some four or five days before this event, Mr. Marston, having, as he
said, some business in Chester, and further designing to meet his son
there, took his departure from Gray Forest, leaving poor Rhoda to the
guardianship of her guilty stepmother; and although she had seen so
little of her father, yet the very consciousness of his presence had
given her a certain confidence and sense of security, which vanished at
the moment of his departure. Fear-stricken and wretched as he had been,
his removal, nevertheless, seemed to her to render the lonely and
inauspicious mansion still more desolate and ominous than before. She had, with a vague and instinctive antipathy, avoided all contact and
intercourse with Mrs. Marston, or as, for distinctness sake, we shall
continue to call her, "Mademoiselle," since her return; and she on her
part had appeared to acquiesce with a sort of scornful nonchalance, in
the tacit understanding that she and her former pupil should see and hear
as little as might be of one another. Meanwhile poor Willett, with her good-natured honesty and her
inexhaustible gossip, endeavored to amuse and reassure her young
mistress, and sometimes even with some partial success. We must now follow Mr. Marston in his solitary expedition to Chester. When he took his place in the stagecoach he had the whole interior of the
vehicle to himself, and thus continued to be its solitary occupant for
several miles. The coach, however, was eventually hailed, brought to, and
the door being opened, Dr. Danvers got in, and took his place opposite to
the passenger already established there. The worthy man was so busied in
directing the disposition of his luggage from the window, and in
arranging the sundry small parcels with which he was charged, that he
did not recognize his companion until they were in motion. When he did so
it was with no very pleasurable feeling; and it is probable that Marston,
too, would have gladly escaped the coincidence which thus reduced them
once more to the temporary necessity of a Tate-à-Tate. Embarrassing as
each felt the situation to be, there was, however, no avoiding it, and,
after a recognition and a few forced attempts at conversation, they
became, by mutual consent, silent and uncommunicative. The journey, though in point of space a mere trifle, was, in those
slowcoach days, a matter of fully five hours' duration; and before it was
completed the sun had set, and darkness began to close. Whether it was
that the descending twilight dispelled the painful constraint under which
Marston had seemed to labor, or that some more purely spiritual and
genial influence had gradually dissipated the repulsion and distrust with
which, at first, he had shrunk from a renewal of intercourse with Dr.
Danvers, he suddenly accosted him thus. "Dr. Danvers, I have been fifty times on the point of speaking to
you--confidentially of course--while sitting here opposite to you, what I
believe I could scarcely bring myself to hint to any other man living;
yet I must tell it, and soon, too, or I fear it will have told itself." Dr. Danvers intimated his readiness to hear and advise, if desired; and
Marston resumed abruptly, after a pause--

"Pray, Doctor Danvers, have you heard any stories of an odd kind; any
surmises--I don't mean of a moral sort, for those I hold very cheap--to
my prejudice? Indeed I should hardly say to my prejudice; I mean--I ought
to say--in short, have you heard people remark upon any fancied
eccentricities, or that sort of thing, about me?" He put the question with obvious difficulty, and at last seemed to
overcome his own reluctance with a sort of angry and excited
self-contempt and impatience. Doctor Danvers was a little puzzled by
the interrogatory, and admitted, in reply, that he did not comprehend
its drift. "Doctor Danvers," he resumed, sternly and dejectedly, "I told you, in the
chance interview we had some months ago, that I was haunted by a certain
fear. I did not define it, nor do I think you suspect its nature. It is a
fear of nothing mortal, but of the immortal tenant of this body. My mind;
sir, is beginning to play me tricks; my guide mocks and terrifies me." There was a perceptible tinge of horror in the look of astonishment with
which Dr. Danvers listened. "You are a gentleman, sir, and a Christian clergyman; what I have said
and shall say is confided to your honor; to be held sacred as the
confession of misery, and hidden from the coarse gaze of the world. I
have become subject to a hideous delusion. It comes at intervals.