The New Magdalen

She had never yet seen the circumstances in this sinister light. She was

alone in her room, at a crisis in her life. She was worn and weakened by

emotions which had shaken her to the soul.

Little by little she felt the enervating influences let loose on her, in

her lonely position, by her new train of thought. Little by little her

heart began to sink under the stealthy chill of superstitious dread.

Vaguely horrible presentiments throbbed in her with her pulses, flowed

through her with her blood. Mystic oppressions of hidden disaster

hovered over her in the atmosphere of the room. The cheerful

candle-light turned traitor to her and grew dim. Supernatural murmurs

trembled round the house in the moaning of the winter wind. She was

afraid to look behind her. On a sudden she felt her own cold hands

covering her face, without knowing when she had lifted them to it, or

why.

Still helpless, under the horror that held her, she suddenly heard

footsteps--a man's footsteps--in the corridor outside. At other times

the sound would have startled her: now it broke the spell. The footsteps

suggested life, companionship, human interposition--no matter of what

sort. She mechanically took up her pen; she found herself beginning to

remember her letter to Julian Gray.

At the same moment the footsteps stopped outside her door. The man

knocked.

She still felt shaken. She was hardly mistress of herself yet. A faint

cry of alarm escaped her at the sound of the knock. Before it could be

repeated she had rallied her courage, and had opened the door.

The man in the corridor was Horace Holmcroft.

His ruddy complexion had turned pale. His hair (of which he was

especially careful at other times) was in disorder. The superficial

polish of his manner was gone; the undisguised man, sullen, distrustful,

irritated to the last degree of endurance, showed through. He looked at

her with a watchfully suspicious eye; he spoke to her, without preface

or apology, in a coldly angry voice.

"Are you aware," he asked, "of what is going on downstairs?"

"I have not left my room," she answered. "I know that Lady Janet has

deferred the explanation which I had promised to give her, and I know no

more."

"Has nobody told you what Lady Janet did after you left us? Has nobody

told you that she politely placed her own boudoir at the disposal of the

very woman whom she had ordered half an hour before to leave the house?

Do you really not know that Mr. Julian Gray has himself conducted this

suddenly-honored guest to her place of retirement? and that I am left

alone in the midst of these changes, contradictions, and mysteries--the

only person who is kept out in the dark?"

"It is surely needless to ask me these questions," said Mercy, gently.

"Who could possibly have told me what was going on below stairs before

you knocked at my door?"