where my sister lives. He was Mrs. Jenkinson’s nephew.”
“Was his name Thomas?” asked Jane, eagerly.
“I don’t know, my lady. I can’t remember. Margaret could tell.”
“And what was he? In any profession?”
Judith shook her head. Margaret knew, no doubt, she said: she would inquire of her if her lady pleased.
Her lady did please, and told her to do so. But Lady Jane did not think much of this: West was rather a common name.
On this same afternoon at dusk, Mr. Carlton was in his surgery alone, preparing some mixture for Lucy—for the medicines necessary for her had been supplied by him, not by Mr. Grey. It grew too dark to see the proportions with any exactness, and he lighted one of the gas burners. The flame went flaring up, and Mr. Carlton turned to the narrow counter again, which was close under the window, and took a bottle in his hand.
Reader, when your room has been lighted up, and the window left exposed, have you ever felt a dread, a horror of what you might witness there?—Of seeing something unearthly, or what you may fear as such, standing outside the glass, and peering in? I believe that it is a sensation which has been experienced by many, causing them to drag down the blind, or to order the shutters closed with all speed. Was it this feeling which induced Mr. Carlton to look up from his employment, full at the window before him? or was his mind guided by subtle instinct, whispering that somebody was there?
The face, but imperfectly seen, was pressed against the glass, in the pane immediately faceing him: that dread face, with its white skin and its black whiskers, and the dark handkerchief round its chin, dreadful to the reminiscence of Mr. Carlton. It appeared to be eagerly watching, not him, but his movements, as he made up the medicine.
Mr. Carlton, impassive Mr. Carlton, found that he had nerves for once in his life. He cried aloud, in the moment’s impulse; a wild sort of cry not unlike that of a sea-gull, and the glass jar dropped from his hand on the floor and was shivered into fragments. Mr. Jefferson rushed in to see his principal staring at the surgery window, and all the good syrup of Taraxacum spilled.
CHAPTER L.MISS STIFFING’S EXPEDITION.
December came in. On a cold bitter evening, a night or two subsequent to the above, a young woman might have been seen scudding through the streets of South Wennock. She wore a warm cloak, and kept her black Shetland veil tight over her face to protect it, for the wind was howling and the sleet was beating. It was Miss Stiffing, the maid of Lady Laura Carlton.
“Such a freak of my lady’s!” she grumbled discontentedly, as she went along. “Sending one abroad in this pelting weather! But that’s just like her; She takes a thing into her head, and then it must be done off-hand, convenient or unconvenient. Bother take the big cupboard! What did she go and lose the key for, if she wants it undone?”
She reached a locksmith’s shop and turned short into it. It was only lighted by a solitary candle, and that was placed so as to afford little light beyond the counter. Consequently the maid stumbled over some fire-irons that stood out slanting from the wall; they came down on the run, and she nearly with them.
“Now then! what the plague, White, can’t you keep the shop free for folks to enter?” she testily exclaimed, whilst the unoffending locksmith hastened round, and meekly picked up his property.
“Is it you, Miss Stiffing? And how are you, ma'am?”
“Why, I’m as cranky as them there bell rests of yours, that’s what I am,” returned Miss Stiffing. “She have no more consideration than an owl, haven’t my lady. Fancy her sending me slopping in my thin shoes through the beastly streets to-night!”
“Couldn’t you have put on boots?” asked the blacksmith, sensibly.
“No, I couldn’t. There! When one’s dressed for the evening one doesn’t want to be bothered changing shoes and boots. And you, White! why don’t you have gas in your shop, like other Christians?”
“I can’t afford it, Miss Stifling. And I mostly work in the back room by candle light; the shop’s so precious cold in winter. What can I do for you, miss?”
“I want a skeleton key.”
“A skeleton key!” repeated the tradesman.
“Yes, a skeleton key. Is there anything so odd in that? If I had said a skeleton, you might have stared.”
“What is it for?” he asked, scratching his head, and trying to remember whether the law allowed skeleton keys to be handed over indiscriminately to servants.
“Well, it’s for my lady, if you must come to the bottom of everything. She goes and loses the key of the big cupboard, that stands in the recess by her bedroom door. ‘Where’s the key of that cupboard?’ says she to me, this afternoon. ‘My lady, it’s in the keyhole,’ says I. ‘It’s not,’ says she; ‘you just go and find it’ Well, upon that I call to mind that I had