"I mean--if a person was to take too much of it--by mistake of
course--" says I, my heart in my throat.
"Lord bless you, no. It's only lime-water. You might feed it to a baby
by the bottleful."
I gave a great sigh of relief, and hurried on to Mr. Ranford's. But on
the way another thought struck me. If there was nothing to conceal
about my visit to the chemist's, was it my other errand that Mrs.
Brympton wished me to keep private? Somehow, that thought frightened me
worse than the other. Yet the two gentlemen seemed fast friends, and I
would have staked my head on my mistress's goodness. I felt ashamed of
my suspicions, and concluded that I was still disturbed by the strange
events of the night. I left the note at Mr. Ranford's--and, hurrying
back to Brympton, slipped in by a side door without being seen, as I
thought.
An hour later, however, as I was carrying in my mistress's breakfast, I
was stopped in the hall by Mr. Brympton.
"What were you doing out so early?" he says, looking hard at me.
"Early--me, sir?" I said, in a tremble.
"Come, come," he says, an angry red spot coming out on his forehead,
"didn't I see you scuttling home through the shrubbery an hour or more
ago?"
I'm a truthful woman by nature, but at that a lie popped out
ready-made. "No, sir, you didn't," said I, and looked straight back at
him.
He shrugged his shoulders and gave a sullen laugh. "I suppose you think
I was drunk last night?" he asked suddenly.
"No, sir, I don't," I answered, this time truthfully enough.
He turned away with another shrug. "A pretty notion my servants have of
me!" I heard him mutter as he walked off.
Not till I had settled down to my afternoon's sewing did I realize how
the events of the night had shaken me. I couldn't pass that locked door
without a shiver. I knew I had heard someone come out of it, and walk
down the passage ahead of me. I thought of speaking to Mrs. Blinder or
to Mr. Wace, the only two in the house who appeared to have an inkling
of what was going on, but I had a feeling that if I questioned them
they would deny everything, and that I might learn more by holding my
tongue and keeping my eyes open. The idea of spending another night
opposite the locked room sickened me, and once I was seized with the
notion of packing my trunk and taking the first train to town; but it
wasn't in me to throw over a kind mistress in that manner, and I tried
to go on with my sewing as if nothing had happened.
I hadn't worked ten minutes before the sewing-machine broke down. It
was one I had found in the house, a good machine, but a trifle out of
order: Mrs. Blinder said it had never been used since Emma Saxon's
death. I stopped to see what was wrong, and as I was working at the
machine a drawer which I had never been able to open slid forward and a
photograph fell out. I picked it up and sat looking at it in a maze. It
was a woman's likeness, and I knew I had seen the face somewhere--the
eyes had an asking look that I had felt on me before. And suddenly I
remembered the pale woman in the passage.
I stood up, cold all over, and ran out of the room. My heart seemed to
be thumping in the top of my head, and I felt as if I should never get
away from the look in those eyes. I went straight to Mrs. Blinder. She
was taking her afternoon nap, and sat up with a jump when I came in.
"Mrs. Blinder," said I, "who is that?" And I held out the photograph.
She rubbed her eyes and stared.
"Why, Emma Saxon," says she. "Where did you find it?"
I looked hard at her for a minute. "Mrs. Blinder," I said, "I've seen
that face before."
Mrs. Blinder got up and walked over to the looking-glass. "Dear me! I
must have been asleep," she says. "My front is all over one ear. And
now do run along, Miss Hartley, dear, for I hear the clock striking
four, and I must go down this very minute and put on the Virginia ham
for Mr. Brympton's dinner."