dow-curtains, and the fire was out. She woke up with a start, cold and frightened. The room was very still, very still. She listened for the sleeper’s breathing, and heard only her own heart throbbing and a faint buzzing in her ears. To start forward, to draw the window-curtain, and to turn towards the bed, was the work of a moment; it required no second look,—the white face and wide-open eyes could only be those of the dead.
CHAPTER IV.
The girl’s screams awoke the doctor and Mr. Silas, who came hurrying up-stairs and rushed into the room. Long afterwards Hester recollected how unsteadily Mr. Adams stood by the bed, how his hands shook, and how unintelligibly he spoke,—how calm and collected Mr. Silas was throughout the scene. Long afterwards she recollected too, among all the dreadful details belonging to the death and funeral, that she picked up in the ashes of the grate a straightened hair-pin, which had been thrown into the fire, but not consumed. The circumstance was, in itself, so trivial that, had it not in some odd fashion connected this death with the former one, she would not have given it a second thought. As it was, her thoughts dwelt upon it, she scarcely knew why.
For many weeks after the funeral the whole house was partially shut up and darkened; the servants were again changed, excepting Hester, who would have gone also, had not her mistress implored her to remain. The sick lady seemed to droop more and more. She never left her room; she never read nor worked; she hardly ever spoke, except sometimes with Mr. Silas about legal business, of which there appeared to Hester’s mean comprehension to be a great quantity. Hester at best must have been poor company, for she was herself in bad health, out of spirits, nervous, and irritable. She, however, did her utmost to comfort her mistress, for whom she had, from the first, entertained a great regard; and, indeed, ever-suffering, gentle, uncomplaining, who could help but love her?
The sick lady wasted away slowly. The spring ripened into summer, and still she grew no better; the summer began to wane, the days to shorten; the dead leaves fell and drifted with a ghostly music, as the sick lady and her attendant sat silently in the twilight on those calm autumn evenings towards the end.
Winter was coming round again, and she grew worse. About November she took to her bed. Hester was in constant attendance upon her; indeed, the patient fretted at her absence. For hours she would sit, holding the faithful girl’s hand in hers, and sometimes she would form plans of what they would do next year when she was better. It was determined that, as soon as she was well enough to go out, she should go to London, and change of air would no doubt lead to her perfect recovery.
Still she sank, slowly but surely. Then Hester began to fancy that there was a change in the expression of her face: a sort of dread and fear seemed settling upon it. One evening, when Hester was leaving the room to go to bed (she slept in an adjoining apartment), her mistress called her back.
“Hester,” she said, “you have been a very good girl, very kind and patient with me, and you shall not be forgotten when I die.”
“Dear mistress, do not speak so.”
“Yes, Hester, I am sure I shall go before long. But you will not leave me till my time is over? With you I feel safe.”
“Feel safe, ma’am?”
“Hush, Hester!” the sick lady said, half raising herself in the bed, and drawing the girl closer to her. “I am afraid of—him!”
Hester felt instinctively whom she meant. The mistress read her own terror in the servant’s face; and as they sat silently clasped in each other’s arms, all of a sudden they both became conscious of another’s presence in the room. A dusky form flitted across the light, a lean hand stole in snake-like between the drawn curtains at the bottom of the bed, then a human head, hollow-cheeked and evil-looking, peeped in upon the affrighted women, with a wolfish glare half hidden in its wicked eyes.
“How is the patient?” asked Mr. Silas, with a smile.
CHAPTER V.
The same eyes watched her as crossing the threshold of her own room Hester looked back at Silas’s retreating figure on the stairs. Throughout the night, restlessly tossing in an uneasy wakefulness or troubled slumber, the same head and hand were ever present to her excited fancy. How could she lie there? A hundred times she fancied that there was some one handling the lock of the door. Then she was sure that she heard a noise in her mistress’s room. Should she go to her? No. All was again quiet, and again she closed her eyes. So she continued until towards daylight, when fatigue and anxiety overcame her, and she slept. But not for long. Her mistress’s voice awoke her, not calling loudly, but clear, distinct, and close to her—
“Hester!”
She awoke at the sound and sat up to listen. All was still: it must have been a dream. Again she lay down, and again a whisper filled the room—
“Hester!”
She tore the curtain of the bed on one side. No, there was no one but herself present. Without another thought, she rushed into her mistress’s room and threw herself upon the bed, clutched the cold face in her hands, clasped the cold form to her breast, sobbing and moaning distractedly over the dear, dear friend whom she had lost. There was the old frightened look upon the dead lady’s face, the same look which the sister’s face had worn, the same which Hester remembered on the face of Mr. Ralph, and there was upon the bosom of the corpse a small round mark like the prick of a pin, just over the heart.
The house was soon alarmed, and the servants came crowding in as they had done before on a similar occasion; but Hester—terrified, stupified, and giddy with the horrible thoughts which possessed her—got away from them all, and to avoid any further questions, sought refuge in the garden.