“And is she here?” He did not mean Eve.
“Even so.”
“What brought her so low? she has long hidden from me.”
“A guilty secret, perchance.”
Sir John asked no more, and they entered the gateway of a house at the end of the court, which had once been a fair dwelling, but now the door hung by one hinge, and the windows were battered out. They entered the hall; tattered hangings drooped in fragments from the walls, beetles and spiders had their home amidst the rotten wainscotting, woodlice swarmed in the bannisters of the ancient staircase, the balustrade was partly broken away, the stairs were rotten.
“And is she here?” said Sir John again.
“Even so,” was the reply; “tread carefully, the staircase will bear thee in places only.”
The ceiling, which had been moulded in patterns, had fallen away, and hideous joists and beams were disclosed as they ascended.
Then they heard a faint moan of pain, and a voice said, “Dying, dying, left all alone to die; Mother of Mercy, aid a sinful child of Eve.”