"You are not afraid of the family terror?"
Ralph laughed. He laughed hard down in his throat, chuckling horribly.
"I am afraid of nothing," he said; "if you only knew what I know you would not wish to live. I tell you I would sit and see my right arm burnt off with slow fire if I could wipe out the things I have seen in the last five years! I heard of the family fetish at Bombay, and that was why I came home. I prefer a slumbering hell to a roaring one."
He spoke as if half to himself. His words were enigmas to the interested listeners; yet, wild as they seemed, they were cool and collected.
"Some day you shall tell us your adventures," Ravenspur said not unkindly, "how you lost your sight, and whence came those strange disfigurements."
"That you will never know," Ralph replied. "Ah, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our narrow and specious philosophy. There are some things it is impossible to speak of, and my trouble is one of them. Only to one man could I mention it, and whether he is alive or dead I do not know."
Marion rose. The strangely uttered words made her feel slightly hysterical. She bent over Ravenspur and kissed him fondly. Moved by a strong impulse of pity, she would have done the same by her uncle Ralph, but that he seemed to divine her presence and her intention. The long, slim hands went up.
"You must not kiss me, my child," he said. "I am not fit to be touched by pure lips like yours. Good-night."
Marion turned away, chilled and disappointed. She wondered why Ralph spoke like that, why he shuddered at her approach as if she had been an unclean thing. But in that house of singular happenings one strange matter more or less was nothing.
"The light of my eyes," Ravenspur murmured. "After Vera, the creature I love best on earth. What should we do without her?"