I was too tired and out of spirits to eat or drink much, especially with the solemn servant waiting on me as elaborately as if a small dinner party had arrived at the house instead of a solitary man. In a quarter of an hour I was ready to be taken up to my bedchamber. The solemn servant conducted me into a prettily furnished room⁠—said, “Breakfast at nine o’clock, sir”⁠—looked all round him to see that everything was in its proper place, and noiselessly withdrew.

“What shall I see in my dreams tonight?” I thought to myself, as I put out the candle; “the woman in white? or the unknown inhabitants of this Cumberland mansion?” It was a strange sensation to be sleeping in the house, like a friend of the family, and yet not to know one of the inmates, even by sight!

When I rose the next morning and drew up my blind, the sea opened before me joyously under the broad August sunlight, and the distant coast of Scotland fringed the horizon with its lines of melting blue.