Now, Colonel Le Noir was extremely jealous of receiving strangers
under his roof, never, during his short stay at the Hidden House,
going out into company, lest he should be obliged in return to
entertain visitors. And when he learned that a strange girl had
spent the night beneath his roof, he frowningly directed that Dorcas
should be sent to him.
When his morose manager made her appearance he harshly demanded the
name of the young woman she had dared to receive beneath his roof.
Now, whether there is any truth in the theory of magnetism or not,
it is certain that Dorcas Knight--stern, harsh, resolute woman that
she was toward all others--became as submissive as a child in the
presence of Colonel Le Noir.
At his command she gave him all the information he required, not
even withholding the fact of Capitola's strange story of having seen
the apparition of the pale-faced lady in her chamber, together with
the subsequent discovery of the loss of her ring.
Colonel Le Noir sternly reprimanded his domestic manager for her
neglect of his orders and dismissed her from his presence.
The remainder of the day was passed by him in moody thought. That
evening he summoned his son to a private conference in the parlor--
an event that happily delivered poor Clara Day from their presence
at her fireside.
That night Clara, dreading lest at the end of their interview they
might return to her society, retired early to her chamber where she
sat reading until a late hour, when she went to bed and found
transient forgetfulness of trouble in sleep.
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