Above was the painted ceiling of the apartment, whereon gods and goddesses, in faded tints, disported themselves among dingy blue clouds, surrounded by cupids, sea-horses, rising suns and waning moons, while, below, a threadbare carpet covered the polished floor but imperfectly. A huge marble fireplace, cold and black-looking, heavy, cumbersome chairs, solid-looking tables, a quaint old spinet with thin legs and several comfortable-looking sofas, filled up the room. There were also grim-looking faces frowning from the walls, cabinets filled with grotesque china, now worth its weight in gold, bizarre ornaments from India and China, and many other quaint things, which made the apartment look like a curiosity-shop to the refined taste of the artist. But in spite of the old-time magnificence of the place, spiders spun their webs in the corners, grey dust lay thickly around, and a chill, tomb-like feeling pervaded the room. Even the cheerful sunlight could not lift the heavy shadow which seemed to brood over it, and it seemed, in its loneliness, to be a chamber of some enchanted palace, such as we read of in eastern tales.
Nor was the proprietor out of place in this decayed realm of former grandeur, for he looked old and weird enough to have been coeval with the pristine splendours of the Grange. The worn face, the sudden gleams of insane fire from the deeply-set eyes, the snowy, sparse hair that fell from under the black skull-cap, and the sombre robe, all seemed to be the semblance of some hoary necromancer rich in malignant spells of magic.
Had Randal Garsworth mixed with the world he would have been a different creature. Had he gone abroad among his fellow men and taken an interest in their ideas concerning politics, literature, and music, he would have retained a healthy mind by such generalization of his intellect. But, shutting himself up, as he had done, in a lonely house, and concentrating his mind upon himself, he lapsed into a morbid state which prepared him for the reception of any fantastical idea. While thus lingering in this unhealthy life, he chanced upon the curious doctrine of metempsychosis, and it speedily took possession of his diseased mind, already strongly inclined towards strange searchings. The weirdness of the Pythagorean theory appealed to his love of the whimsical, and he became a monomaniac on the subject. Under the influence of a lonely life, ardent studies of the philosophers who supported the theory of transmigration, and his selfish application of these wild doctrines to his own soul, the monomania under which he laboured deepened into madness.