Carmilla

I was now for the first time frightened, and I yelled with all my might

and main. Nurse, nursery maid, housekeeper, all came running in, and

hearing my story, they made light of it, soothing me all they could

meanwhile. But, child as I was, I could perceive that their faces were

pale with an unwonted look of anxiety, and I saw them look under the

bed, and about the room, and peep under tables and pluck open cupboards;

and the housekeeper whispered to the nurse: "Lay your hand along that

hollow in the bed; someone did lie there, so sure as you did not; the

place is still warm."

I remember the nursery maid petting me, and all three examining my

chest, where I told them I felt the puncture, and pronouncing that there

was no sign visible that any such thing had happened to me.

The housekeeper and the two other servants who were in charge of the

nursery, remained sitting up all night; and from that time a servant

always sat up in the nursery until I was about fourteen.

I was very nervous for a long time after this. A doctor was called in,

he was pallid and elderly. How well I remember his long saturnine face,

slightly pitted with smallpox, and his chestnut wig. For a good while,

every second day, he came and gave me medicine, which of course I hated.

The morning after I saw this apparition I was in a state of terror, and

could not bear to be left alone, daylight though it was, for a moment.

I remember my father coming up and standing at the bedside, and talking

cheerfully, and asking the nurse a number of questions, and laughing

very heartily at one of the answers; and patting me on the shoulder, and

kissing me, and telling me not to be frightened, that it was nothing but

a dream and could not hurt me.

But I was not comforted, for I knew the visit of the strange woman was

not a dream; and I was awfully frightened.

I was a little consoled by the nursery maid's assuring me that it was

she who had come and looked at me, and lain down beside me in the bed,

and that I must have been half-dreaming not to have known her face. But

this, though supported by the nurse, did not quite satisfy me.

I remembered, in the course of that day, a venerable old man, in a black

cassock, coming into the room with the nurse and housekeeper, and

talking a little to them, and very kindly to me; his face was very sweet

and gentle, and he told me they were going to pray, and joined my hands

together, and desired me to say, softly, while they were praying, "Lord

hear all good prayers for us, for Jesus' sake." I think these were the

very words, for I often repeated them to myself, and my nurse used for

years to make me say them in my prayers.