This personage, because of the gloom, or the better to observe the
intruder on his solitude, carried a lantern whose beams were reflected
upon himself, attired as he was from head to foot in the palest
primrose, but with a countenance yet paler.
There was no hint of enmity or alarm or astonishment in the
colourless eyes that were fixed composedly on mine, nothing but
courtesy in his low voice.
"Back, Safte!--back, Sallow!" he cried softly to his hounds; "is this
your civility? Indeed, sir," he continued to me, "it was all I could
do to dissuade the creatures from giving tongue when you first
appeared on the terrace of my solitary gardens. I heard too the
water-sprite: she only sings when footsteps stray upon the banks." He
smiled wanly, and his nose seemed even sharper in his pale face, and
his yellow hair leaner about his shoulders. "I feared her voice might
prove too persuasive, and deprive me of the first strange face I have
seen these many decades gone."
I bowed and murmured an apology for my intrusion, just as I might
perhaps to some apparition of nightmare that over-stayed its welcome.
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