This last memorandum was also brief, and written when the author
was annoyed by Jocelyn leaving him. The defection of his companion had been apparently entirely unexpected. There was at least no previous hint of any such intention. Temple wrote
that Jocelyn had left the Villa de Angelis that day and taken up his
abode with the Carthusians of San Martino. No reason for such an
extraordinary change was given; but there was a hint that Jocelyn had
professed himself shocked at something that had happened. The entry
concluded with a few bitter remarks: _"So farewell to my holy anchoret;
and if I cannot speed him with a leprosie as one Elisha did his servant,
yet at least he went out from my presence with a face as white as
snow. "_

I had read this sentence more than once before without its attracting
other than a passing attention. The curious expression, that Jocelyn had
gone out from his presence with a face as white as snow, had hitherto
seemed to me to mean nothing more than that the two men had parted in
violent anger, and that Temple had abused or bullied his companion. But
as I sat alone that night in the library the words seemed to assume an
entirely new force, and a strange suspicion began to creep over me. I have said that one of the most remarkable features of Sir John's
illness was his deadly pallor. Though I had now spent some time at
Worth, and had been daily struck by this lack of colour, I had never
before remembered in this connection that a strange paleness had also
been an attribute of Adrian Temple, and was indeed very clearly marked
in the picture painted of him by Battoni. In Sir John's account,
moreover, of the vision which he thought he had seen in his rooms at
Oxford, he had always spoken of the white and waxen face of his spectral
visitant. The family tradition of Royston said that Temple had lost his
colour in some deadly magical experiment, and a conviction now flashed
upon me that Jocelyn's face "as white as snow" could refer only to this
same unnatural pallor, and that he too had been smitten with it as with
the mark of the beast. In a drawer of my despatch-box, I kept by me all the letters which the
late Lady Maltravers had written home during her ill-fated honeymoon. Miss Maltravers had placed them in my hands in order that I might be
acquainted with every fact that could at all elucidate the progress of
Sir John's malady. I remembered that in one of these letters mention was
made of a sharp attack of fever in Naples, and of her noticing in him
for the first time this singular pallor. I found the letter again
without difficulty and read it with a new light. Every line breathed of
surprise and alarm. Lady Maltravers feared that her husband was very
seriously ill. On the Wednesday, two days before she wrote, he had
suffered all day from a strange restlessness, which had increased after
they had retired in the evening. He could not sleep and had dressed
again, saying he would walk a little in the night air to compose
himself. He had not returned till near six in the morning, and then
seemed so exhausted that he had since been confined to his bed. He was
terribly pale, and the doctors feared he had been attacked by some
strange fever. The date of the letter was the 25th of October, fixing the night of the
23d as the time of Sir John's first attack. The coincidence of the date
with that of the day missing in Temple's diary was significant, but it
was not needed now to convince me that Sir John's ruin was due to
something that occurred on that fatal night at Naples. The question that Dr. Frobisher had asked Miss Maltravers when he was
first called to see her brother in London returned to my memory with an
overwhelming force. "Had Sir John been subjected to any mental shock;
had he received any severe fright?" I knew now that the question should
have been answered in the affirmative, for I felt as certain as if
Sir John had told me himself that he _had_ received a violent shock,
probably some terrible fright, on the night of the 23d of October. What
the nature of that shock could have been my imagination was powerless to
conceive, only I knew that whatever Sir John had done or seen, Adrian
Temple and Jocelyn had done or seen also a century before and at the
same place. That horror which had blanched the face of all three men
for life had fallen perhaps with a less overwhelming force on Temple's
seasoned wickedness, but had driven the worthless Jocelyn to the
cloister, and was driving Sir John to the grave. These thoughts as they passed through my mind filled me with a vague
alarm. The lateness of the hour, the stillness and the subdued light,
made the library in which I sat seem so vast and lonely that I began to
feel the same dread of being alone that I had observed so often in my
friend. Though only a door separated me from his bedroom, and I could
hear his deep and regular breathing, I felt as though I must go in
and waken him or Parnham to keep me company and save me from my own
reflections. By a strong effort I restrained myself, and sat down to
think the matter over and endeavour to frame some hypothesis that might
explain the mystery. But it was all to no purpose. I merely wearied
myself without being able to arrive at even a plausible conjecture,
except that it seemed as though the strange coincidence of date might
point to some ghastly charm or incantation which could only be carried
out on one certain night of the year. It must have been near morning when, quite exhausted, I fell into an
uneasy slumber in the arm-chair where I sat. My sleep, however brief,
was peopled with a succession of fantastic visions, in which I
continually saw Sir John, not ill and wasted as now, but vigorous and
handsome as I had known him at Oxford, standing beside a glowing brazier
and reciting words I could not understand, while another man with a
sneering white face sat in a corner playing the air of the _Gagliarda_
on a violin. Parnham woke me in my chair at seven o'clock; his master,
he said, was still sleeping easily. I had made up my mind that as soon as he awoke I would inquire of Sir
John as to the pages missing from the diary; but though my expectation
and excitement were at a high pitch, I was forced to restrain my
curiosity, for Sir John's slumber continued late into the day. Dr.
Bruton called in the morning, and said that this sleep was what the
patient's condition most required, and was a distinctly favourable
symptom; he was on no account to be disturbed. Sir John did not leave
his bed, but continued dozing all day till the evening. When at last he
shook off his drowsiness, the hour was already so late that, in spite of
my anxiety, I hesitated to talk with him about the diaries, lest I
should unduly excite him before the night. As the evening advanced he became very uneasy, and rose more than once
from his bed.