“Then I shouldn’t tell them, if I were you. You will find a use for the art of conversation some day, you know, when you come across other frivolous and good-for-nothing young persons, like Mrs. Dale and me.”
Mabin would rather he had not coupled his name with that of the lovely widow.
“Were Mr. and Mrs. Bonnington interested to hear you had been to see her?” asked Mabin, feeling as she spoke that this was another indiscretion.
But Rudolph began to laugh mischievously.
“They would have been extremely ‘interested,’ I am sure, if they had heard of it,” said he. “But I have too much consideration for my parents to impart to them any information which would ‘interest’ them too deeply to be good for their digestions. I suppose you think that shocking, don’t you?”
But Mabin was cautious. There was more than one gulf, she felt, between her and the merry young sailor, and she was not going to make them any wider.
“I’m sure you do what is best,” she said modestly.
“I’ve got something to tell you,” said he. “But it’s rather a confidential communication, and these lilac bushes extend a long way. Will you come nearer to the wall? Or may I get over it?”
“You may get over if you like,” said Mabin, coming as she spoke a little nearer to the bushes.
Rudolph availed himself of the permission in the twinkling of an eye, and stood beside her on the grass path under the limes, looking down at the pretty nape of the girlish neck, which showed between the soft brown hair and the plain, wide turn-down collar of pale blue linen which she wore with her fresh Holland frock.
“The man—I told you about the man I saw watching ‘The Towers,’ well, he has disappeared,” said Rudolph, not sorry to have an excuse for whispering into such a pretty little pink ear.
“Oh! I am glad!”
“So I hope we shall see no more of him.”
“And do you still think—surely you can’t still think—that he was watching Mrs. Dale?”
“Oh, well, don’tknow, of course. And at any rate the slight objection I had to your going to ‘The Towers’ has disappeared.”
Mabin felt a strange pleasure at the interest implied in this concern for her. There was a pause, broken by Mabin, who suddenly started, as if waking from a dream.
“The carriage!” cried she. “They have come back. I must go in. Good-by.”
She held out her hand. He took it, and detained it a moment.
“I may come and see you sometimes, when you are at ‘The Towers,’ mayn’t I? For old acquaintance’ sake?”
“Or—for Mrs. Dale’s!” said Mabin quickly, as she snatched away her hand and ran into the house.
She was not so silly as not to know where the attraction of ‘The Towers’ lay!
Mrs. Rose’s lumbering old landau, which made such a contrast to Mrs. Dale’s smart victoria, had returned from the station, and as it drove slowly along the road past ‘The Towers,’ Mrs. Rose was just finishing to Mrs. Haybrow a long recital of her difficulties in connection with the doubtful new resident.
Mr. Rose had chosen to come back on foot, so his wife could pour out her tale without interruption or contradiction.
“There,” she cried below her breath, as they came close to the gates of ‘The Towers,’ “you will be able to see her. She is standing just inside the garden, calling to her little dog. Don’t you think that a little dog always looks rather—ratherodd?”
Mrs. Haybrow thought that this was somewhat severe judgment, but she did not say so. She got a good view of the mysterious lady in black; for Mrs. Dale raised her golden head as the carriage passed, and she and Mrs. Rose exchanged a rather cool bow.
To the great surprise of her companion, Mrs. Haybrow fell suddenly into a state of intense excitement.
“Why, it’s Dolly Leatham, little Dolly Leatham!” she cried with evident delight. “The idea of my meeting her down here! I haven’t seen the child for years.”
“You know her then?” asked Mrs. Rose, in a tone which in relief was mingled with disappointment at the collapse of her own suspicions.
“I used to know her very well. She was the belle of that part of Yorkshire. The last I heard of her was that she was engaged to be married to some man who had a lot of money; and they said she was being hurried into it by her people rather against her will.”
“Well, she has managed to get rid of him,” said Mrs. Rose coldly. “You see she is in widow’s dress now.”
“Yes, so I see. Poor Dolly! It seems rather strange to find her here, so far from all her friends! And the things you have told me.”
After a pause Mrs. Haybrow said decidedly: “I must call upon her to-morrow—No, I’ll go and see her at once. There will be plenty of time before dinner, won’t there? There’s something mysterious about this, and I must find out what it is.”
So, when she had had a cup of tea, Mrs. Haybrow went straight to “The Towers.”
She remained there a long time, so long that Mrs. Rose wondered what the ladies could have to say to each other. And when at last Mabin, who was watching at the drawing-room window for her return, called out that she was coming up the garden, the girl added: “Oh, mamma, how pale she looks!”
“She is tired, no doubt,” said Mrs. Rose, as she left the room to meet her friend as the latter came in.
But she also was surprised to see how white Mrs. Haybrow had grown.
“You should have waited until after dinner. You look quite worn out,” she said. “Well, and what had your friend got to say to you?”
Mrs. Haybrow paused, as if too much exhausted to answer at once. Then she said quietly:
“I was mistaken. She was not my friend after all.”
“Not your friend! Dear me! You were so long gone that we were quite sure she was.”
“No. She is very nice, though, quite a charming woman.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Mrs. Rose suspiciously. “But what do you think about her having Mabin?”
There was another slight pause before Mrs. Haybrow answered: “I am sure you may be quite satisfied about that.”
But when dinner was over, Mrs. Haybrow got Mabin to take her to see the new ducks that Mr. Rose was so proud of; and on the way back she asked the girl whether she was very anxious for her visit to “The Towers.” And finding that she was, Mrs. Haybrow added:
“And of course, dear, if anything were to happen while you were there, which seemed to you rather strange or unusual, you would write or telegraph to papa and mamma, at once, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course. I see,” went on Mabin, smiling, “that mamma has managed to infect you already with her own suspicions of poor Mrs. Dale.”
“No, dear, she seemed to me a very nice woman indeed, and very anxious to have you. But I am getting old, and I am nervous about girls away from their homes. That is all.”
And she turned the conversation to another subject.
Mrs. Rosewas not a woman of acute perceptions, but even she was vaguely conscious that there was something not quite satisfactory about the account Mrs. Haybrow had given of her visit to “The Towers.”
Surely it was very strange that, after being so sure that Mrs. Dale was an old friend of hers, she should have discovered that she was mistaken! And again, if the pretty widow had really proved to be a stranger, why should Mrs. Haybrow, tired as she was after her journey, have stayed at “The Towers” so long?
And besides, Mrs. Rose could not help thinking that she had heard some name like “Dolly Leatham” before, although she had forgotten that it was from the lips of Mrs. Bonnington, and that it had been part of the backstairs gossip which Mr. Rose would have been angry with her for encouraging.
Mrs. Rose was a person in whose mind few facts long remained in a definite shape. Accustomed to have all mental processes performed for her by her husband, she lived in a state of intellectual laziness, in which her faculties had begun to rust. Mr. Rose had complete confidence in Mrs. Haybrow, who was indeed a staid, solid sort of person who inspired trust. If, therefore, Mr. Rose trusted to Mrs. Haybrow’s judgment, and Mrs. Haybrow saw no objection to Mabin’s visit, surely there was no need to fatigue one’s self by hunting out obstacles to a very convenient arrangement.
And so it fell out that, when Mrs. Haybrow’s visit was over, and the Roses started for Switzerland, Mabin saw them all off at the station, and then returned to “Stone House,” to pack up the few things she had left out which she would want during her stay at “The Towers.”
She had reached the portico, and was going up the steps of her home with leisurely steps, rather melancholy at the partings which had been gone through, and with a few girlish fears about her visit, when the door of the house was opened suddenly before she could ring the bell, and the parlormaid, one of the two servants who, at the request of the new tenant, had been left behind, appeared, with her finger to her lips.
Mabin stopped on the top step and looked at her with surprise.
Langton came out, and spoke in a whisper:
“Shall I pack up your things, and send them in to Mrs. Dale’s to-night, Miss Mabin? Mr. Banks has come, and he seems such a queer sort of gentleman, I don’t quite know how to take him yet. He came upon us quite sudden, almost as soon as the ’bus with the luggage had turned the corner, and asked sharp-like, if they were all gone. And I said ‘Yes,’ and he seemed relieved like, and so I didn’t dare to mention you were coming back to fetch your things.”
Mabin stared gloomily at Langford, who was evidently anxious to get rid of her.
“What’s the matter with him? Do you think it is Mr. Banks, and not some man who’s got into the house by pretending to be he?”
“Lor’, Miss Mabin, I never thought of that!” cried poor Langford, turning quite white.
She had evidently entertained faint suspicions of her own, for at this suggestion she was about to fly into the house in search of the new-comer, and perhaps to brand him as an impostor, when Mabin, smiling at her alarm, caught hold of her to detain her.
“No, no, you silly girl. Of course it’s all right. It’s sure to be all right. He’s probably eccentric, that’s all. Doesn’t he look the kind of person you would expect?”
“Oh, yes, Miss Mabin, he’s every inch a gentleman. But—” She hesitated, apparently unable to put into appropriate words the impression the new tenant had made upon her.
“But what?”
“He is rather—rather strange-looking. I—I think he looks as if he wouldn’t live long. His face has a sort of gray look, as if— Well, Miss Mabin, it’s a queer thing to say, but he looks to me half-scared.”
“Mad?” suggested Mabin, more with her lips and eyebrows than with her voice.
Langford nodded emphatically.
“Oh, dear!”
Then Mabin was silent, trying to recollect all that she had heard in the family circle about the gentleman who was so anxious to take the house. And she found that it did not amount to much. A rich man, a bachelor, of quiet habits, who disliked unnecessary fuss and noise, and whose references Mr. Rose’s lawyer had declared to be unimpeachable—this was the sum of the family knowledge of Mr. Banks.
“Did he come quite alone?” asked Mabin, in spite of the mute entreaties of Langford that she would take herself off.
“Yes, Miss Mabin, quite alone. And he said his luggage would be sent on.”
After a short pause, during which Mabin made up her mind that there was nothing to be done but to accept the new-comer as the genuine article until he proved to be an impostor, she turned reluctantly to go.
“Good-by, Langford. Bring me my things, and mind you don’t forget to feed my canary. And you might come and see me sometimes in the evening, when you can get away. I think I shall be lonely.”
And indeed there were tears in the eyes of the girl, who was already homesick now that she found herself thus suddenly denied admittance at the familiar portal.
It was in a very sober and chastened mood that the young girl arrived, a few minutes later, at the gate of “The Towers,” but the welcome she received would have put heart into a misanthrope.
Mrs. Dale was waiting in the garden, her pretty, fair face aglow with impatience to receive her friend. She drew the arm of Mabin, who was considerably taller than herself, through hers, and led her at once into the house, to the room which Mabin had been in before.
The table was laid for luncheon, and Mabin observed with surprise that there were two places ready, although she had not promised to come till the afternoon.
“There!” cried Mrs. Dale, triumphantly, pointing to the table, “was I not inspired? The fact is,” she went on, with a smile which was almost tearful, “I was so anxious for you to come that I had begun to tell myself that I should be disappointed after all, so I had your place laid to ‘make believe,’ like the children. And now you are really here. Oh, it seems too good to be true!”
Mabin was pleased by this reception, as she could not fail to be, but she was also a little puzzled. She was conscious of no attractions in herself which could explain such enthusiasm on her account.
“I am afraid,” she said shyly, “that I shall turn out a bitter disappointment. You can’t know much about girls, Mrs. Dale, or you would feel, as they all do at home, that there is a time, which I am going through now, when a girl is just as awkward and as stupid and as generally undesirable as she can possibly be.”
“Hush, hush, child! You don’t know anything about it. Don’t you know that girls are charming, and that part of their charm lies in that very belief that they are ‘all wrong,’ when as a matter of fact they are everything that is right?”
“Ah! You were never gawky and awkward!”
“I wasn’t tall enough to be gawky, as you like to call yourself. But five years ago, when I was eighteen, I was just as miserable as you try to make yourself, believing myself to be in everybody’s way. It led to awful consequences in my case,” added Mrs. Dale, the excitement going quite suddenly out of her face and voice, and giving place to a look and tone of dull despair. Mabin, who had been made to take off her hat, put her hand in that of the little widow.
“Come and see if you like your room,” said Mrs. Dale, springing quickly toward the door, with a rapid change of manner. “I must tell you frankly I am afraid you won’t, because this place has been constructed haphazard, without any regard to the comfort or convenience of the unfortunate people who have to live in it. Every fireplace is so placed that the chimney must smoke whichever way the wind is, and every window is specially adapted to let in the rain, when there is any, and the wind, when there isn’t.”
Mrs. Dale led the way as she spoke from the dining-room, and Mabin followed.
Mrs. Dale certainly exaggerated the defects of the house, but that it was inconvenient could not be denied. The side nearest to the road, where the dining-room was, had once been the whole house. It had a basement, and out of the warren of small rooms of which it had once consisted, a fairly large hall and a few fair-sized rooms had been made.
The newer but not very new portion of the house had no basement, and it was by a short flight of steps that you descended from the hall into the drawing-room, and by another short flight that you ascended to the bedroom floor. Here the same irregularity was apparent. A corridor ran through the house from end to end on this floor, broken where the new part joined the old by half a dozen steep steps.
It was to a bedroom on the higher level at the old end of the house that Mrs. Dale conducted Mabin.
“Why, it’s a lovely room!” cried the girl, surprised to find herself in a big, low-ceilinged corner room lighted by three windows, and looking out, on one side, to the road, with a view of fields and sea beyond, and on the other to the garden at the back of the house, where apple-trees and gooseberry-bushes and the homely potato occupied the chief space, while the nooks were filled with the fragrant flowers of cottage gardens, with sweet-william and sweet-pea, mignonette and wallflower.
“Do you really think so? I’m so glad. I went over to Seagate the other day and got some cretonne for the curtains and the easy-chair. The old chintz there was in the room would have given you the nightmare.”
Mabin had not recovered from her first impression of astonishment and admiration. The dingy dining-room, with its mahogany and horsehair, had not prepared her for this. A beautiful rug lay in front of the fireplace, which was filled with a fresh green fern.
“This will be put in the corridor outside at night,” Mrs. Dale was careful to explain.
The hangings of the little brass bedstead were of cretonne with a pattern of gray-green birds and white flowers on a pale pink ground: these hangings were trimmed with lace of a deep cream tint. The rest of the furniture was enamelled white, with the exception of a dainty Japanese writing-table in one window, and a low wicker arm-chair in another.
But it was not so much in these things as in the care and taste with which all the accessories had been chosen, the silver candlesticks and tray on the dressing-table, the little Sèvres suit on the mantelpiece, that a lavish and luxurious hand was betrayed. Mabin’s delighted admiration made Mrs. Dale smile, and then suddenly burst into tears.
“Don’t look at me, don’t trouble your head about me, child,” she cried, as she turned away her head to wipe her eyes. “It was my vanity, the vanity I can’t get rid of, that made me want to show you I know how to make things pretty and nice. I made the excuse to myself that it was to please you, but really I know it was to please myself!”
“But why shouldn’t you please yourself and have pretty things about you?” asked Mabin in surprise. “Is there any harm in having nice things, if one has the money to buy them and the taste to choose them? I suppose it helps to keep the people that make them.”
“That is what I used to say to myself, dear,” said Mrs. Dale with a sigh. “But now I don’t buy pretty things any more—for—for a reason.” And again a look of deep pain swept across her face. But at Mabin’s interested look she shook her head. “No, no,” she added, in a frightened whisper, “I wouldn’t tell you why for all the world!”
“But you wear pretty clothes! Or is it only that you look so pretty in them?” suggested Mabin, blushing with the fear that she was blundering again.
Mrs. Dale shook her head smiling slightly: “I have my frocks made to fit me, that’s all,” she said simply. “And as for these,” she touched the flashing rings on her fingers, “I wear them because I’m obliged to.”
Which was all sufficiently puzzling to the young girl, who, having washed her hands, was drying them on a towel so fine that this use seemed to her a sacrilege. She refrained from further remark, however, upon the luxury in which she found herself installed, and as the luncheon bell rang at that moment the two ladies went downstairs together.
But after the beautiful appointments of her room, Mabin was struck by the contrast afforded by the rest of the house, which was furnished in the usual manner, with worn carpeting in the corridor and on the stairs, and with cheap lamps on brackets and tables in the hall and passages.
At luncheon Mrs. Dale was again in high spirits. She chattered away brightly for the amusement of her young companion, who, entirely unaccustomed to so much attention, was happier than she ever remembered to have been in her life before. Mrs. Dale did not spare the eccentricities in walk and dress of the ladies in the neighborhood any more than they had spared hers.
“I don’t know how you can ever be dull when such funny things come into your head!” cried simple Mabin, wiping her eyes over a hearty fit of laughing.
Mrs. Dale grew suddenly grave again.
“Ah, nothing is amusing when one is by one’s self, or when one has—thoughts!” she ended in a low voice, with a different word from the one which had been in her mind. “And now let me show you my den. No, it is not a boudoir; it is nothing but a den. Come and see.”
She opened a door which led from the dining-room at once into a small room, even more bare, more sombre than the other. It had evidently once served the purpose of a library or study, for there was a heavy old bookcase in one corner and a row of empty book-shelves in another. And there was the usual horsehair sofa.
By the one window, however, there was a low and comfortable, though shabby wicker chair.
“I have had this other door fastened up and the cracks filled in,” said Mrs. Dale, showing a door opposite to the one by which they had entered. “It goes down by a flight of break-neck stairs into the drawing-room, a loathsome dungeon into which I never penetrate. The draught used to be strong enough to blow me away. So I thought,” she went on with curious wistfulness, “I might just have that done.”
Again Mabin wondered at the penitential tone; again she glanced up. But Mrs. Dale recovered herself more quickly this time, and putting the girl gently into the wicker chair, while she curled herself up on the horsehair sofa, she drew Mabin out and encouraged the girl by sympathetic questions, and by still more sympathetic listening, to lay bare some of the recesses of her young heart.
The afternoon passed quickly; and when Mrs. Dale, springing suddenly off the sofa after a silence, ran away into the dining-room to ask about certain dainties which she had ordered from town for Mabin’s benefit, but which had failed to arrive that morning, the girl was left in a state of happy excitement, thinking what a picture the little golden-haired creature had made as she sat curled up on the sofa, and wondering how she could have been so ungrateful as to imagine she could be anything but happy under the same roof with Mrs. Dale.
Mabin looked idly out of the window, and craned her neck to see if she could catch a glimpse of the sea. But this was the north side of the house, and the sea was on the southwest; so she failed. But as she looked out, she saw a fly drive slowly up the road, and was surprised to find that the solitary occupant, an elderly lady with gray hair, and a hard, forbidding face, stared at her fixedly through a pair of gold eyeglasses as if she felt some personal interest in her. Mabin felt herself blush, for she was sure she had never seen the lady before.
Just as she drew her head in she heard the cab stop at the front gate. Mrs. Dale’s voice, talking brightly to the parlormaid, came to Mabin’s ears through the door, which had been left ajar. Then she heard a knock at the front door, and the parlormaid went to answer it.
“Mabin, come here,” cried Mrs. Dale from the next room. “I want to show you——”
The words died on her lips; and Mabin, who was in the act of coming into the dining-room in obedience to her call, stopped short, and, after a moment’s consideration of what she ought to do, retreated into the smaller room and shut the door behind her.
But she had been in time to witness a strange meeting. For the elderly lady whom she had seen in the cab had appeared at the outer door of the dining-room as she had shown herself at the inner one, and it was at the sight of her that Mrs. Dale had stopped short in her speech, with a look of abhorrence and terror on her face.
The elder lady spoke at once, in a harsh, commanding voice. She was very tall, erect, and stately, handsomely dressed in black, altogether a commanding personality. Her voice rang through the room, and reached Mabin’s ears, striking the girl with terror too.
“I am afraid I have taken you by surprise.”
“I suppose,” answered Mrs. Dale in a low voice, “that was what you intended to do.”
“I am sorry to see you meet me in that spirit. I have come with every wish for your good. I think it is not right that you should be left here by yourself, as you hold no intercourse, of course, with the people of the neighborhood.”
There was a pause, which Mrs. Dale would not break.
“I propose, therefore,” went on the elder lady, “to stay with you myself, at least for a little while.”
Mrs. Dale, who had remained standing, as her visitor did also, turned upon her quickly:
“That I will not put up with.”
“That is scarcely courteous, surely?”
“There is no question of lip-courtesy between you and me. You, and no one else, have been the cause of all that has happened, and I refuse, absolutely refuse, to stay under the same roof with you for a single day.”
In the mean time poor Mabin, frightened and uncertain what to do, had in the first place put her hands to her ears so that she might not play the part of unwilling eavesdropper. But as the voices grew too loud for her to avoid hearing what the ladies said, she made a frantic rush for the door, and presented herself, breathless, blushing, in the doorway.
“Oh, I—I can’t help hearing what you say!” cried she, glancing from the forbidding face of the visitor to Mrs. Dale, who looked prettier than ever in her anger.
“My dear, it doesn’t matter,” said Dorothy gently.
But the elder lady broke in:
“It does matter very much. This is not a fit house for a young girl while you live in it.”
And turning to Mabin, she said with a sudden burst of vindictive feeling: “Go home at once to your proper guardians. The woman you are now with is a——”
Before she could utter the word which was ready to her lips, Mrs. Dale interrupted her. Springing between the other two women with a low cry, she addressed the elder lady with such a torrent of passion that both Mabin and the visitor could only listen without an attempt to stop her.
“You shall not say it! You shall not tell her?! You know that she was safe with me, as if she had been in her own home. You have spoilt her happiness with me, because you knew it made me happy. But you shall not contaminate her with your wicked words. Go, child.” She seized Mabin by the arm, and ran with her to the outer door of the dining-room. “Run away. I will find you when this woman is gone.”
And the next moment Mabin found herself in the hall, with the dining-room door closed.
Therewas silence in the room for a few minutes after the abrupt dismissal of Mabin. Mrs. Dale made a perfunctory gesture of invitation to her unwelcome visitor to be seated, and threw herself into a hard horsehair-covered armchair by the window, which she carefully closed.
The visitor, however, remained standing. She was evidently rather astonished at the high-handed behavior of the culprit whom she had come to examine, and uncertain how to deal with her. At last she said in a very cutting tone:
“I suppose I ought not by this time to be surprised at your behaving in an unbecoming manner to me, or to anybody. But as you pretended to profess some penitence for your awful sin on the last occasion of our meeting, I own I was carried away by my indignation when I found you receiving visitors, and young girl visitors. Surely you must recognize how improper such conduct is?”
“And which do you suppose is the more likely to do her harm? To stay with me knowing nothing, or to hear from your lips the awful thing you were going to tell her? Why, the poor child would never have got over the shock!”
“It would have been less harmful to her soul than constant communication with you, impenitent as you are!”
“You have no right to say that to me. How can you see into my heart?”
“I judge you by your actions. I find you here, talking and laughing, and enjoying yourself. And I hear that you have already created a most unfavorable impression in the neighborhood by your rudeness to people who have wished to be civil to you.”
“Was it not your own wish that I should shut myself up?”
“Yes, but in an humble, not in a defiant, manner. And then you drive about as if nothing had happened, and excite remarks by your appearance alone, which is not the appearance of a disconsolate widow.”
“By whose wish was it that I bought a carriage?”
“By mine, I suppose,” replied the other frigidly, “but I meant a brougham, so that you could go about quietly, not an open and fashionable one, for you to show yourself off!”
“Well, I refuse to drive about in a stuffy, shut-up carriage. I am quite ready to walk, if you wish me to put the carriage down. And I can quite well do with less money than what you allow me. But I maintain the right to spend my allowance, whatever it may be, exactly as I please. Because one has committed one fault——”
“Fault!” almost shrieked the visitor. “One grave and deadly sin.”
“Because I have done wrong, great wrong,” replied Mrs. Dale. And even to this antagonistic woman her voice shook on the words, “You have no right to think that I am never to lead an independent life. You have no right to the control of my actions. All that you can demand is that I should live decently and quietly. As long as I do so I ought to be, Iwillbe, as free as ever.”
“But,” persisted the other, “you seem not to understand what decency requires. In the first place it is imperatively necessary,” and as she said this there was a look of genuine anxiety in her eyes, “that you should hold no intercourse whatever with persons of the opposite sex.”
Mrs. Dale said nothing to this; and the look of questioning solicitude in the face of the other grew deeper.
“Surely,” she asked at last, “you must see this yourself?”
“That,” answered Mrs. Dale deliberately, “is also a matter which rests entirely with me. I won’t be dictated to on that subject any more than on any other.”
“Well, then, I warn you that I shall have to keep you in strict surveillance, and that if I hear of your encouraging, or even permitting, the attentions of any man, young or old, I shall feel myself bound in honor to put him in possession of the facts of your history.”
“And if you do,” retorted Mrs. Dale, rising and speaking in a low tone full of fire and passionate resentment, “if you interfere with me in my quiet and harmless life by telling any person whom I choose to call my friend the horrible thing that you hold over my head, I will break away from you and your surveillance once and for all. I will have the whole story published in the papers, with your share in it as well as mine, and let the world decide which of us is the most to blame: the young woman who has wrecked and poisoned her whole life by one rash and wicked act, or the old one who drove her to it, and then used it forever afterward to goad and madden her!”
She paused, and leaned against the table, white to the lips with intense excitement, panting with her own emotion. The other lady had grown white too, and she looked frightened as she answered:
“You are allowing your passion to carry you away again. I should have thought you had been cured of that.” The younger lady shuddered, but said nothing; “I was bound to put you on your guard, that was all.”
Mrs. Dale moved restlessly. Her face was livid and moist, her hands were shaking:
“Surely you have done that!” she said ironically. “Even the Inquisitors of Spain used to let their victims have a little rest from the torture sometimes; just to let the creatures get up their strength again, to give more sport on a future occasion!”
The visitor affected to be offended by this speech, and drew herself up in a dignified manner. But it was possible to imagine that she felt just a little shame, or a little twinge of remorse, for her persistent cruelty, for she went so far as to offer a cold hand to Mrs. Dale as she prepared to go.
Mrs. Dale looked as if she would have liked to refuse the hand, but did not dare. She touched the black glove with white, reluctant fingers, and let it go at once.
“Good-by, Dorothy,” said the elder lady “I am sure you will believe, when you come to yourself and think it over, that I have only your interests at heart in the advice I have given you. No, you need not come to the door. I shall take just one walk round to look at your garden before I go. I have a cab waiting.”
She sailed out of the room, the jet fringes on her gown and mantle making a noise which set Mrs. Dale’s teeth on edge.
As soon as she was alone, Dorothy threw herself face downward on the hard sofa and burst into a passion of tears and sobs, which rendered her deaf and blind and unconscious of everything but the awful weight at her heart, which she must carry with her to her grave, and of the cruelty which had revived in its first intensity the old, weary pain.
She was mad, desperate with grief. She felt that it was more than she could bear; that the remorse gnawing at her heart, the more bitterly for the pleasure of the morning, had reached a point where it became intolerable, where the strength of a woman must give way.
And then when she had crawled out of the room, with smarting eyes and aching head, and found the way up to her own shabby, gloomy room with staggering feet, there came to her ear from the garden the sound of a fresh, girlish voice, uttering words which were balm to the wounded soul.
“I don’t care,” Mabin was saying to some unseen person among the yew trees on the lawn, “I don’t care what she’s done. She is a sweet woman, and I love her all the more for having to be preached to by that old cat!”
No eloquence, no smoothly rounded periods of the most brilliant speaker in the universe could have conveyed to poor unhappy Dorothy half the solace of those inelegant words! She began to smile, all red-eyed as she was, and to feel that there was something worth living for in the world after all. And when she had bathed her face, and lain down for a little ease to her aching head, she was able presently to look out with an impulse of pleasure at the bright green of the lawn, where the shadows of the tall elms were growing long, and to listen to the sound of young voices talking and laughing, and to feel that there was something left in life after all.
The voices, as she knew, were those of Mabin and Rudolph. The Vicar’s son had called, with a huge bunch of flowering rushes, for Mrs. Dale, while the mysterious visitor was with her. The parlormaid, therefore, had informed him that Mrs. Dale was engaged, but that Miss Rose was in the garden; and he had lost no time in going in search of the latter.
He was surprised to find her in a state of great distress, shedding furtive tears, and trying to hide a face eloquent of grief.
“May I ask what’s the matter?” he asked, when she had begun to talk about the flowers and the trees, in a rather broken and unmanageable voice.
“Oh, I don’t know whether I ought to tell you!”
“Well, look here. I’ll go as far as the wall that shuts in the kitchen-garden; that’s on the other side of the house, you know. I’ll walk very slowly, and if I find any caterpillars on the gooseberries I’ll pick them off. That will give you a long time. And when I come back I shall expect you to have made up your mind whether you can tell me or not. Only,” added he wistfully, “I do hope you will make up your mind that you can; for I’m ‘dying of curiosity,’ as the ladies say.”
“No, they don’t say that,” said Mabin cantankerously. “Women are much less curious than the men, really. I wouldn’t have heard what I did for worlds if I could have helped it. And you are ‘dying’ to know it!”
“Well, I won’t argue with you,” replied Rudolph philosophically, as he walked slowly, according to his promise, in the direction of the kitchen-garden.
Mabin watched him, drying her eyes, and asking herself whether there would be any harm in confiding in him. She felt the want of some one of whom she could take counsel in this extremely embarrassing situation for a young girl to find herself in. If only Mrs. Haybrow had been at hand! She was a motherly woman, whose sympathy could be as much relied upon as her advice. Not once did it occur to the girl to write to her step-mother, who would have consulted Mr. Rose, with results disastrous to the reputation of poor little Mrs. Dale. For it was not to be supposed that a father could allow his daughter to remain in the house of a lady about whom there was certainly more than a suspicion of irregularity of some sort.
She was pondering these things, in a helpless and bewildered fashion, anxious to do right, and not quite certain where the right lay, when she heard a firm step on the gravel path, and, looking round, saw that the austere-looking lady who had descended so abruptly upon Mrs. Dale was coming toward her.
Mabin would have liked to run away, and did indeed give one glance and make one step, in the direction of the little path between the yews which led round to the kitchen garden.
But the person she had to deal with was not to be put off in that manner.
“Stop!” she cried, in such an imperious voice that Mabin obeyed at once. “I want to speak to you.”
Mabin glanced up at the hard, cold face, and her heart rose in rebellion at the thought that the severe expression was for poor Mrs. Dale. She drew up her head with a flash of spirit, and waited quietly for what the elder lady had to say.
“What is your name? And where do you live?” asked the lady.
At first, guessing that this vixenish woman wanted to communicate with her friends about the desirability of removing her from “The Towers,” Mabin felt inclined to refuse to answer. But a moment’s reflection showed her that it would be easy for the lady to get the information she wanted from the servants; so she said:
“My name is Mabin Rose, and my father is on his way to Geneva.”
“And how did he become acquainted with—” she paused, and added in a peculiar tone, as if the name stuck in her throat—“with Mrs. Dale?”
“They were neighbors,” answered Mabin shortly.
“You had better write to him and ask him to take you away,” said the lady. “There are circumstances——”
But Mabin put her hands up to her ears.
“Not a word!” cried she. “I won’t hear a word. I beg your pardon for having to be so rude, but I won’t listen to you; I won’t hear a word against my friend.”
She was prepared in her excitement for some sort of struggle. But the lady merely glared at her through her long-handled eye-glasses in disgust, and with a pinched smile and a contemptuous movement of the shoulders, walked majestically back toward the house.
The parlormaid, trying to look discreetly incurious, was standing by the gate, to open it for the visitor to go out. But the lady paused to enter into conversation with her; and Mabin was filled with indignation, believing, as she did, that the stranger’s motives were not above suspicion. And she caught the words which the maid uttered just before the cab drove away with the stranger:
“Very well, my lady.”
And then she heard Rudolph’s voice behind her.
“Well, have you had time to make up your mind?”
She started and turned quickly. He was surprised to see that all traces of tears had disappeared, and that her face was burning with excitement.
“Oh, yes, yes. I must tell you now! If I didn’t, I should have to go and confide in Mrs. Dale’s little dog!”
“Well, I promise to be quite as discreet.”
“That cab that you saw drive away had in it a woman who came here to see Mrs. Dale, and who told me that I ought to go away and not stay in the same house with her!”
“Well?”
“Well! Is that all you have to say? Aren’t you disgusted? You who pretend to like and admire Mrs. Dale so much?”
“There is no pretense in it. I do like and admire her very much. But how can you be astonished after the warnings you have had?”
Mabin looked at him with wide open eyes.
“I thought,” she said rather coldly, “that you would take her part.”
“Yes, so I will; so I do. But I don’t feel quite sure whether you ought to.”
“And why not? Why, since I like and pity her too, shouldn’t I take her part too?”
For a few minutes Rudolph was silent.
“You’re a girl,” said he at last.
“But that’s no reason why I should act meanly!”
“Ah, well, if it’s not a reason, it’s an excuse.”
“I don’t think so. I like to stand by my friends. I haven’t many; I haven’t any I like better than Mrs. Dale. So, whatever it is that she has done, I shall stay with her as long as she wants me, and do all I can to prevent these stories getting to papa’s and mamma’s ears.”
Rudolph looked at her fair face, which was aglow with generous enthusiasm, and smiled in hearty approval.
“That’s right,” said he warmly. “And if people are too much shocked by your daring, why you can marry me, you know, and when once you’re married you can snap your fingers at them all.”
But at this suggestion Mabin had suddenly turned pale. In truth she liked Rudolph well enough not to be able to bear a jest on the idea of marriage with him. Naturally he was surprised and even a little hurt by the abrupt change in her sensitive face.
“Oh, you need not look so frightened,” said he, laughing. “I only suggested it as a last resource in case of extremity.”
“Oh, I know. But—what extremity?”
“If people think the worse of you for standing by your friend.”
Mabin drew her tall, slim figure to its fullest height.
“I shouldn’t care,” said she. “I should snap my fingers at them in any case.”
Rudolph considered her for a few silent minutes. It was then that she uttered the words which reached Mrs. Dale’s ears, and startled while they comforted the unhappy woman:
“I don’t care—I don’t care what she’s done. She is a sweet woman, and I love her all the more for having to be preached to by that old cat.”
And then she noticed that she and her companion were standing rather near an open window, and she walked quickly back to the lawn and the elm trees.
“What old cat?”
“Didn’t you see her? A tall woman with a face carved in marble. She was driving away as you came back.”
“I didn’t see much of her. Do you know who she is?”
“No. She’s a ‘ladyship,’ from what the maid said. And she looks like one, which ladyships hardly ever do. That’s all I know.”
“A relation of Mrs. Dale’s, I suppose?”
“Ye-e-s, I suppose so, from the things she said. But oh! Mrs. Dale has never done anything to deserve such a relation as that!”
“Poor thing! No. But one can’t help feeling curious.”
“I can help it,” cried Mabin stoutly. “I know how these spiteful old women make mountains out of molehills, and I will never believe that it isn’t a molehill in this case after all.”
Rudolph looked at her curiously.
“Do you know who it is that has taken your father’s house?” he asked in a dry tone.
“Yes, a Mr. Banks. He came this morning, as soon as papa and mamma were out of the house.”
“And do you know anything about him? Is he a friend of your father’s?”
“No. He was looking for a furnished house down here, and heard that we wanted to let ours. It was all arranged through his solicitor and papa’s. He is an invalid, I believe, come here for change of air. Why do you ask?”
“Because I was in the lane between your garden and this just before I came here, and I saw a man walking along the grass path, and recognized him as the man I found watching Mrs. Dale a fortnight ago. There’s a secret for you, in return for yours.”
Mabin looked frightened. She remembered her own suspicions that the man who had presented himself as Mr. Banks was an impostor.
“What was he like?” she asked.
“He was very thin and pale, and he looked like a gentleman. I could hardly tell whether he was old or young.”
“Perhaps,” she faltered, “he isn’t Mr. Banks at all!”
Rudolph did not answer immediately. Then he said slowly:
“I wonder what he has come for?”
Mabin stared at him stupidly. As they stood silent in the quiet garden, they both heard a slight rustling of the leaves, a cracking of the branches, near the wall which divided the garden from the lane.
“Whatwas that?” asked Mabin with a shiver.
She and Rudolph had both turned instinctively toward the spot from which the rustling noise had come.
“A cat, most likely,” answered Rudolph.
But Mabin shook her head.
“I saw something,” whispered she. “It was not a cat, it was not an animal at all; it was a man.”
Perhaps Rudolph had his suspicions, for he expressed no surprise. Before he could answer her they heard the crackling and rustling again, but at a little distance. The intruder was making his way through the shrubbery.
“Won’t you find out who it is?” whispered the girl again.
Rudolph hesitated.
“Perhaps I know,” said he shortly. “But if you wish, of course I can make sure.”
Then, with evident reluctance, and taking no pains to go noiselessly, he followed the intruder through the bushes, and was in time to catch a glimpse of him as he disappeared over a part of the fence that was in a broken-down condition. Rudolph did not attempt to continue his pursuit, but contented himself with waiting until he heard the side gate in the garden wall of “Stone House” swing back into its place with a loud creaking noise. Then he went back to Mabin. She was standing where he had left her, on the broad gravel path under the faded laburnum. The shadows were very deep under the trees by this time, and in the half-light her young face, with its small, delicate features, its dreamy, thoughtful eyes, full of the wonder at the world of the very young, looked so pretty that for the moment Rudolph forgot the errand on which he had been sent, and approached her with no thought of anything but the beauty and the sweetness of her face.
She, all unconscious of this, woke him into recollection with one abrupt word: “Well?”
“Oh!” almost stammered he, “it was as I thought, the same person that I saw watching before.”
“And he went into our garden. I heard the gate,” said Mabin with excitement. “It must be this Mr. Banks. Oh, who do you think he is? What do you think he has come for?”
Rudolph was silent. Even to the least curious mind the circumstances surrounding both him and Mrs. Dale could not seem other than mysterious. If he were a detective, and he certainly did not look like one, surely he would not go to work in this extravagant manner, by renting a large and expensive house merely for the purpose of watching his next-door neighbor. Neither, it might be supposed, would he set to work in such a clumsy fashion as to be caught making his investigations at the very outset. Rudolph felt that the whole affair was a mystery to which he could not pretend to have the shadow of a clew. He confessed this to Mabin.
“I wish,” he went on, in a gentle tone, “that I had known something of this before your father went away.”
“Why?” asked Mabin in surprise, and with something like revolt in her tone.
“Because I should have told him something, just enough at any rate to have made him take you away with him.”
Mabin was for a moment dumb with surprise.
“What,” she stammered at last, “after all your talk about my being right to stand by my friend?”
“Even after all that,” assented Rudolph with decision. “The matter is getting too serious,” he went on gravely. “I am afraid myself of what may be going to happen.”
“Then,” retorted the girl, “for all your talk about meanness being excusable in a girl, I can be a better friend than you.”
Rudolph smiled.
“Ah,” said he, “you forget that with you it is only a question of your friendship for Mrs. Dale. Now I have to think of both of you.”
“You need not trouble yourself about me, I assure you.”
“But that is just what I must do, madam, even at the risk of your eternal displeasure,” said Rudolph, with a mock-heroic air which concealed real anxiety. “You are not only daring enough, you are too daring where your heart is concerned, and it is the business of your friends to see that you do not suffer for your generosity.” He spoke with so much quiet decision that Mabin was impressed and rather frightened, and it was with a sudden drop from haughtiness to meekness that she then asked:
“What are you going to do, then?”
Rudolph hesitated.
“What I should like to do,” said he, “is to take you to my mother’s——”
Mabin almost screamed.
“You won’t do that,” she said quietly, with her lips very tightly closed.
“She would be very kind to you,” suggested Rudolph gently, pleadingly.
He knew the prospect was not an enticing one, but he was not so quick as the girl to see all its disadvantages.
“And don’t you see that it would set them all saying the most dreadful things about poor Mrs. Dale, if I were to leave her suddenly like that? I shouldn’t think of such a thing. It would be cruel as well as cowardly. She would never be able to stay in Stone after that.”
“I don’t think she will be able to stay in any case,” said Rudolph gloomily. “If she is persecuted by this spy on the one hand, and by the old woman on the other, it isn’t likely that she will be able to stay here long.”
A new idea flashed suddenly into Mabin’s mind and then quickly found expression:
“Do you suppose,” she asked, “that this man, this Mr. Banks, is paid by the old lady to spy upon Mrs. Dale? The old lady must be very rich, I think, and she is eccentric evidently.”
But Rudolph was inclined to think this idea far-fetched. From what he had seen of the mysterious spy he had come to quite another conclusion, one that at present he did not care to communicate to Mabin, for fear of alarming her unnecessarily.
“Of course it is possible that the man may be a paid detective,” admitted he doubtfully, “but there was nothing of the cut of the ex-detective about your Mr. Banks. And now,” went on Rudolph, who found Mabin herself a more interesting mystery than the unknown man, “let us forget all about him for a little while, and go up to the old seat where the trees leave off, before it gets too dark for us to see the sea. You remember the old seat, and how we used to trespass to get at it, don’t you?”
Mabin blushed a little. She remembered the old seat very well; an old broken-down bench supported on the stumps of a couple of felled trees, just on the edge of the plantation belonging to “The Towers.” Being conveniently near both to “Stone House” and the Vicarage, the children of both houses had established, in those far-off years which Rudolph was recalling, a right to tread down the old fence at that particular point, and to hold wonderful picnics of butterscotch and sour apples.
“We won’t go up there now,” she said, with a sudden demureness which contrasted strongly with the eagerness she had shown while discussing the persecution of Mrs. Dale. “It’s getting dark, and rather cold, I think, and besides, I hope by this time that Mrs. Dale may be ready to see us again.”
Rudolph felt snubbed. The girl’s manner was so precise, so stiff, that it was impossible for him to understand that her sudden primness was only a relapse into her ferocious girlish modesty. He followed her without a word toward the house, and there just inside the portico they saw the slight figure in black looking like a pathetic vision in the gloaming, with its white, tear-stained face and slender little jewelled hands.
“Well?” said Mrs. Dale. And her voice was hoarse and broken. “I have been waiting here for you, wondering where you had gone. I had almost begun to think,” she went on, with assumed playfulness, which did not hide the fact that her fear had been real, “that you had run away from me altogether.”
Mabin lost her awkwardness, her stiffness, her shy, girlish reserve in an instant; moved by strong pity and affection, she took the two steps which brought her under the portico, and stooping, flung her arms round the little figure.
“You didn’t—really?” she whispered hoarsely. “Oh, I hope not, I hope not!”
Mrs. Dale could not answer. But Mabin felt her frame quiver from head to foot, and heard the sound of a stifled sob. Rudolph stepped noiselessly out into the garden again.
“My dear, my dear child,” murmured Mrs. Dale, when she had recovered some of her self-possession by a strong effort, “you would have been quite justified if you had gone. But I am glad, oh, so glad, that you have waited for me to drive you away.”
“You won’t do that!” cried Mabin, starting back, and seeing with surprise in the fair, blue-eyed face an expression of strong resolution. “After pretending you were so glad to have me!”
“It was no pretence, believe me!” said Mrs. Dale with a sad little smile. “But I have got to send you away all the same. It would not be right to keep you here, now that I see the persecution I am to be subjected to still.” And her blue eyes flashed angrily as she spoke. But the next moment her face changed again, and she added quickly, “I have deserved it all. More than all. I am not complaining of that; I have no right to complain. Only—she might have spared you. I should have done you no harm; you would have learnt no evil from me, wicked as I am.”
The girl interrupted her, with a frightened face, and speaking in an eager whisper:
“Oh, hush, hush! You are not wicked. It is dreadful to hear you say such things! I will not let you say them. You have the kindest heart in the world; if you have ever done wrong, you are sorry, bitterly sorry. Wicked people are never sorry. Let me stay with you and comfort you if I can, by showing you how happy it makes me to be with you!”
Mrs. Dale shook her head. She did not, however, repeat in words her resolve that Mabin must go, though the girl guessed by the expression of her face that her mind was made up on the subject.
They stood silently looking out at the soft beauties of the twilight, the greens as they melted into grays blending in such a tender harmony of color that the sight seemed to supply a balm, through tear-dimmed eyes, to their heavy hearts; the scent of the roses came to them across the broad space of gravel, too, mingled with the pleasantly acrid perfume of the limes.
Rudolph’s step, as he took advantage of the silence to thrust himself again upon the notice of the ladies, startled them both.
“Now you’ve spoilt it all!” cried Mrs. Dale, in a tone which was meant to be one of light-hearted pleasantry, but which betrayed too plainly the difficulty she had in assuming it. “The garden looked like a fairy picture till you rushed in and ruined the perspective. Aren’t you going to apologize?”
“No. The picture wanted human interest, so I painted myself into the canvas, just to satisfy your artistic susceptibilities. I am sorry to find you so ungrateful. I hope you, Mabin, have more appreciation?”
But the girl’s eyes were full of tears, and not being used to this light strain of talk, she could not answer, except by a few mumbled words which had neither sense nor coherence. Mrs. Dale put up her hand—she had to stretch it up a long way—and smoothed the girl’s pretty brown hair.
“Don’t tease her,” she said softly. “Mr. Bonnington, I mustn’t ask you to dine with us, but I would if I might.”
“And why mustn’t you?” asked Rudolph.
“Well, because, in the miserably equivocal position I am in, it would be a pleasure—if I may take it for granted that it would be a pleasure to you, as it would certainly be to me—dearly bought. The Vicar would strongly disapprove; your mother would be shocked beyond measure.”
“But I shouldn’t mind that, I assure you. I’ve shocked my mother and excited the disapproval of my father so often that they don’t expect anything else from me. Besides, I am afraid you flatter yourself too much in believing that you have such an enviable peculiarity; if you were to issue invitations to the whole parish to a garden party, or a dinner, or anything you liked, I’m afraid you would be disappointed to find that everybody would come.”
“Perhaps they would think there was safety in numbers, and that, fortified by the presence of everybody else, they could gaze at the monster in security!” suggested Mrs. Dale with a smile.
“In the mean time how much nearer have I got to get to inviting myself to dinner this evening?” said Rudolph, with a subdued voice and a meek manner.
“Ah, well, for Mabin’s sake then, I spare you the humiliation and invite you myself. You shall stay to amuse her, since I am afraid she would find me a very dreary companion.”
“Indeed I shouldn’t,” cried Mabin, blushing deeply, and speaking with as much energy as if the presence of Rudolph were an injury. “I should like nothing better than an evening alone with you.”
Rudolph drew a deep sigh, and even Mrs. Dale could not suppress a smile at the girl’s unconsciousgaucherie. When Mabin realized what a stupid thing she had said, she was of course too much ashamed of herself to laugh at her clumsy words, and fell, instead, into a stiff silence which the others found it impossible to make her break except by demure monosyllabic answers.
When they went into the dining-room, therefore, the evening did not promise to be a lively one. Mrs. Dale seemed to find it impossible to shake off the effects of the visit of her persecutor. Rudolph was oppressed by fears for both the ladies, and by doubts whether his presence there was not an indiscretion which would make matters worse for both of them. While Mabin, perplexed and troubled by a score of unaccustomed sensations, was the most silent, the most distressed of all.
Daylight was still streaming in from the West as they took their seats at the table in the dingily furnished room. Mrs. Dale gave a little shudder as she glanced from the “furnished house” knives to the commonplace dinner service.
“Ah!” she said, “it is not like this that I used to entertain my friends. My little dinners had quite a reputation—once!”
Then, as if she felt that these regrets were worse than vain, she turned the subject abruptly, while a spasm of pain for the moment convulsed her face.
Rudolph on his side was sorry she had mentioned the “little dinners.” They suggested a past life in which there had been something more than frivolity; something with which he would have dissociated Mrs. Dale if he could. But innocent Mabin, wishing to say something, brought the conversation back to the point it had left.
“But why can’t you have pretty dinners now, if you like to?”
Mrs. Dale’s fair face grew whiter as she answered gently:
“I will tell you—presently—some day—why I don’t have anything pretty or nice about me now.”
And Mabin, feeling that she had touched a painful chord, became more silent than ever.
Perhaps it was her sudden subsidence into absolute gloom which caused the other two to make a great effort to restore something like animation to the talk. And being both young, and of naturally high spirits, they succeeded so well that before the meal which had begun so solemnly was over, Mrs. Dale and Rudolph were talking and laughing as if there had never been a shadow upon either of their lives. At first they made brave attempts to drag Mabin into the conversation. But as these efforts were in vain, it naturally ended in her being left out of the gayety, and in her sitting entrenched in a gloomy silence of her own.
And when dinner was over, and they all went into the little adjoining room which Mrs. Dale called her “den,” it was quite natural that Mrs. Dale should sit down at the piano, in the good-natured wish to leave the young people to entertain each other; and equally natural that Rudolph, on finding that Mabin had nothing to say to him, and that she was particularly frigid in her manner, should go over to the piano, and by coaxing Mrs. Dale to sing him his favorite songs and then hers, should continue the brisk flirtation begun at the dinner-table.
Mabin had brought it all upon herself, and she tried to persuade herself that it was quite right and natural, and that she did not mind. And when Rudolph was gone, and she was alone with her hostess, she succeeded in persuading her that she had not felt neglected, but had enjoyed the merriment she had refused to share.
But when she got upstairs into her pretty bedroom, after bidding Mrs. Dale good-night, she had the greatest difficulty in keeping back the tears which were dangerously near her proud eyes.
She did not care for Rudolph, of course not; she wanted him to fall in love with Mrs. Dale, if indeed he had not already done so, and marry her and console her for all her troubles, and stop the persecution of “the cat.” But somehow this hope, this wish, did not give her all the unselfish satisfaction it ought to have done.
And Mabin, wondering what had happened to take the prettiness out of the room and the pleasure out of her acquaintance with Mrs. Dale, fell asleep with her heart heavy and full of nameless grief.
She woke with a start to find a white figure standing motionless in the middle of the room. Mabin sprang up in bed and rubbed her eyes. Was she awake? Or was she only dreaming that the body of a dead woman, stiff, rigid, but in an upright position, was standing like a marble statue between the bed and the nearest window?
She leaped out of bed, and, not without uncanny fears, touched the statuesque figure.
“Mrs. Dale!” she almost shrieked, as the great eyes suddenly turned and fixed a blank, wild gaze upon her face. “Oh, what has happened? What is the matter?”
The figure, which, in white night garments, had looked so unlike the black-robed widow that she had not recognized it, trembled from head to foot. The lips parted, but at first no word escaped them. At last with a strong effort she uttered these words:
“Let me stay here. Let me sit in this arm-chair till morning. Oh, I will not hurt you, or frighten you. But if I go back I shall go mad! This house is haunted, haunted! I have seen——”
A hoarse rattle in her throat seized her, threatened to choke her. With one wild glance round, peering into the corners of the room, she flung herself on the floor, and buried her face in the chair.