"A most pathetic and awesome history!" I exclaimed, after the pause
which instinctively followed the completion of this tale, read as few of
its kind have ever been read, by this woman of infinite resources in
feeling and expression.
"Is it not? Do you wonder that a visit in the dead of night to a spot
associated with such superstitious horrors should frighten me?" she
added as she bundled up the scattered sheets with a reckless hand.
"I do not. I am not sure but that I am a little bit frightened myself,"
I smiled, following with my eye a single sheet which had escaped to the
floor. "Allow me," I cried, stooping to lift it. As I did so I observed
that it was the first sheet, the torn one--and that a line or so of
writing was visible at the top which I was sure had not been amongst
those she had read.
"What words are those?" I asked.
"I don't know, they are half gone as you can see. They have nothing to
do with the story. I read you the whole of that."
Mistress as she was of her moods and expression I detected traces of
some slight confusion.
"The putting up of the partition is not explained," I remarked.
"Oh, that was put up in horror of the stains which from time to time
broke out on the ceiling at that end of the room."
I wished to ask her if this was her conclusion or if that line or two I
have mentioned was more intelligible than she had acknowledged it to be.
But I refrained from a sense of propriety.
If she appreciated my forbearance she did not show it. Rising, she
thrust the papers into a cupboard, casting a scarcely perceptible glance
at the clock as she did so.