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Page 43
"Go on," entreats Dora impatiently.
"The lamp was burning very dimly. The servants were all down-stairs--at
their supper, I suppose--because there was no trace of them anywhere.
Not a sound could be heard. The whole place looked melancholy and
deserted, and filled me with a sense of awe I could not overcome. Still
it attracted me. I lingered there, walking up and down until its very
monotony wearied me; even then I was loath to leave it, and, turning
into a small sitting-room, I stood staring idly around me. At last,
somewhere in the distance I heard a clock strike ten, and, turning,
I decided on going back once more to my room."
Again, emotion overcoming her, Florence pauses, and leans back in her
chair.
"Well, but what is there in all this to terrify you so much?" demands
her cousin, somewhat bewildered.
"Ah, give me time! Now I am coming to it," replies Florence quickly.
"You know the large screen that stands in the corridor just outside
the sitting-room I have mentioned--put there, I imagined to break the
draught? Well, I had come out of the room and was standing half-hidden
by this screen, when I saw something that paralyzed me with fear."
She rises to her feet and grows deadly pale as she says this, as though
the sensation of fear she has been describing has come to her again.
"You saw--?" prompts Dora, rising too, and trembling violently, as
though in expectation of some fatal tidings.
"I saw the door of the room that leads to the haunted chamber slowly
move. It opened; the door that has been locked for nearly fifty years,
and that has filled the breasts of all the servants here with terror and
dismay, was cautiously thrown open! A scream rose to my lips, but I was
either too terrified to give utterance to it, or else some strong
determination to know what would follow restrained me, and I stood
silent, like one turned into stone. I had instinctively moved back a
step or two, and was now completely hidden from sight, though I could
see all that was passing in the corridor through a hole in the
framework of the screen. At last a figure came with hesitating
footsteps from behind the door into the full glare of the flickering
lamp. I could see him distinctly. It was--"
"Arthur Dynecourt!" cries the widow, covering her ghastly face with her
hands.
Florence regards her with surprise.
"It was," she says at last. "But how did you guess it?"
"I knew it," cries Dora frantically. "He has murdered him, he has hidden
his body away in that forgotten chamber. He was gloating over his
victim, no doubt, just before you saw him, stealing down from a secret
visit to the scene of his crime."
"Dora," exclaims Florence, grasping her arm, "if he should not have
murdered him after all, if he should only have secured him there,
holding him prisoner until he should see his way more clearly to getting
rid of him! If this idea be the correct one, we may yet be in time to
save, to rescue him!"
The agitation of the past hours proving now too much for her, Florence
bursts into tears and sobs wildly.
"Alas, I dare not believe in any such hope!" says Dora. "I know that man
too well to think him capable of showing any mercy."
"And yet 'that man,' as you call him, you would once have earnestly
recommended to me as a husband!" returns Florence, sternly.
"Do not reproach me now," exclaims Dora; "later on you shall say to me
all that you wish, but now moments are precious."
"You are right. Something must be done. Shall I--shall I speak to Mr.
Villiers?"
"I hardly know what to advise"--distractedly. "If we give our suspicions
publicity, Arthur Dynecourt may even yet find time and opportunity to
baffle and disappoint us. Besides which, we may be wrong. He may have
had nothing to do with it, and--"
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