the solid stone wall above mentioned. There are many trees on it, which
make it in places gloomy, and there is a deep, dark-looking pond or
small lake, evidently fed by some springs, as the water is clear and
flows away in a fair-sized stream. The house is very large and of all
periods back, I should say, to medi val times, for one part is of stone
immensely thick, with only a few windows high up and heavily barred with
iron. It looks like part of a keep, and is close to an old chapel or
church. I could not enter it, as I had not the key of the door leading
to it from the house, but I have taken with my kodak views of it from
various points. The house has been added to, but in a very straggling
way, and I can only guess at the amount of ground it covers, which must
be very great. There are but few houses close at hand, one being a very
large house only recently added to and formed into a private lunatic
asylum. It is not, however, visible from the grounds.
When I had finished, he said:--
I am glad that it is old and big. I myself am of an old family, and to
live in a new house would kill me. A house cannot be made habitable in a
day; and, after all, how few days go to make up a century. I rejoice
also that there is a chapel of old times. We Transylvanian nobles love
not to think that our bones may lie amongst the common dead. I seek not
gaiety nor mirth, not the bright voluptuousness of much sunshine and
sparkling waters which please the young and gay. I am no longer young;
and my heart, through weary years of mourning over the dead, is not
attuned to mirth. Moreover, the walls of my castle are broken; the
shadows are many, and the wind breathes cold through the broken
battlements and casements. I love the shade and the shadow, and would
be alone with my thoughts when I may. Somehow his words and his look
did not seem to accord, or else it was that his cast of face made his
smile look malignant and saturnine.
Presently, with an excuse, he left me, asking me to put all my papers
together. He was some little time away, and I began to look at some of
the books around me. One was an atlas, which I found opened naturally at
England, as if that map had been much used. On looking at it I found in
certain places little rings marked, and on examining these I noticed
that one was near London on the east side, manifestly where his new
estate was situated; the other two were Exeter, and Whitby on the
Yorkshire coast.
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