railway station named, two miles across the
country—conveyances not to be had—to a
village called Fenhouse-green. A mile farther
would bring me to Fenhouse itself, "the seat
of Mr. and Mrs. Brand." The note was couched
in a curiously sharp, peremptory style, and
pompously worded. I remember, too, that it
was written on a broad sheet of coarse letter
paper, and sealed with what looked at first
sight to be a large coat of arms, but which,
when examined, proved to be only a make-
believe. With my habit of making up histories
out of every incident that came before me, I
decided that the writer was a military man,
wealthy and high born; and that, about to leave
on foreign service, he wished to place his young
and beautiful wife in careful hands so as to
ensure her pleasant companionship during his
absence. I made quite a romance out of that
peremptory letter with its broad margin and
imposing seal

"They will never take me when they have
seen me!" I sighed, as I settled myself in the
third-class carriage which I shared with three
soldiers' wives and a couple of Irish labourers,
and I wished that I could have exchanged my
fate and person with the meanest among them.
Though they were poor, they were not under a
curse, as I was; though man had not uplifted
them, Fortune had not crushed them as she had
crushed me. I was weeping bitterly behind my
veil, overpowered with my own sadness and
despair, and almost decided on not going
farther to meet only with fresh disappointment,
when the train stopped at my station, and I let
myself drift down the tide of circumstance, and
once more dared my chance.

Asking my way to Fenhouse-green, much to
the astonishment, apparently, of the solitary
station-master, I struck into a rugged by-road,
which he said would take me there. The two
miles' walk seemed as if it would never end.
The road was lonely, and the country desolate,
ugly, and monotonous; nothing but a broad
ragged waste, without a tree or an autumn
flower to break the dead dreariness of the scene.
I did not meet a living creature until I came to
an unwholesome-looking collection of cottages,
covered with foul eruptions of fungi and mildew
starting out like a leprosy upon the walls.
Where the village-green should have been, was
a swamp, matted with confervæ. It was a place
to remember in one's dreams, from the neglect
and desolation, the hopeless poverty and feverish
squalor of all about.

If this was the village of which the writer
had spoken so pompously as his property, and
of which I had imagined all that was charming
and picturesque, it did not argue much for
what had to come; and I began to feel that I
had painted too brightly, and, perhaps, had
ranked my chance too low. The place frightened
me. I went through, glad to escape the
stupid wonder of the pallid women and children
who came crowding to the doors, as though a
stranger were a rare and not too welcome sight
among them. Indeed, some seemed to have a
kind of warning terror in their looks when
they pointed in the direction of the House,
as they called it; and one old witch, lifting
her stick, cried, "Surely, surely, not there
belike!" in a tone which froze my blood.
However, it was too late now to recede; so, full of
an indescribable terror, I went on my way,
until I arrived at Fenhouse, where my future
was to lie.

It was a lonely house, standing back from the
road, completely shut in, in front, by a tangled
shrubbery, while at the rear stretched a close
dark wood with a trailing undergrowth of briars
and thorns. The gate hung broken, supported
by one hinge only; the garden was a mass of
weeds and rubbish; the flower-beds overgrown
with grass and nettles; and what had once been
rose-trees and flowering shrubs, left to wither
and die, stifled by bindweed and coarser growths.
The house was of moderate size, two-storied, and
roomy, but so neglected and uncared for, that
it looked more bleakly desolate than anything I
had ever seen before. My dream of the young
and beautiful wife had vanished, and I felt as if
about to be ushered into the presence of some
fantastic horror or deadly crime. The wet leaves
plashed beneath my feet, and sent up their clouds
of autumn odour—the odour of death; unsightly
insects and loathsome reptiles glided before me
with a strange familiarity, which rendered them
yet more loathly; not a bird twittered through
the naked branches of the trees. The whole
place had a wild, weird, haunted look; and,
shivering with dread at I knew not what, I rang
the rusty bell, hanging lonely out of the chipped
and broken socket. The peal startled me, and
brought out a small terrier, which came running
round me, barking furiously and shrilly. The
door was opened by a ragged, slip-shod servant-
girl, and I was shown into a poorly-furnished
room, which seemed to be a kind of library;
to judge at least by the open bookcase, thinly
stocked with shabby books. The room was close
and musty; the fire in the grate was heaped up
carefully towards the middle, and the sides
blocked in by bricks. It was a mean fire: a
stingy, shabby fire.

After waiting for some time, a gentleman and
lady came in. She was a pale, weak, hopeless-
looking woman, very tall, fair, and slender, with
a narrow forehead, lustreless light blue eyes
with no eyelashes, scanty hair, straw-coloured
ill-defined eyebrows, and very thin pale lips.
She was slightly deformed, and carried her arms
thrust far back from the elbow, the hands left
to dangle nervelessly from the wrists. She
stooped, and was dressed in a limp faded cotton
gown, every way too scanty and too cold for the
season. When she came in, her eyes were bent
towards the soiled grey carpet, and she never
raised them, or made the least kind of salutation,
but sat down on a chair near the window,
and began to unravel a strip of muslin. The
gentleman was short and thick-set, very
active and determined-looking, with dark hair
turning now to grey, a thick but evenly-cut
moustache, joining his bushy whiskers, the large