I crossed the dining-room—it was fancy, of course, that held my eyes from glancing at the portrait for fear I should see it smiling approval—and so finally reached the hall, where the light from the floor above seemed now quite bright in comparison. All the doors I closed carefully behind me; but first I had to open them. The woman had closed every one. Up the stairs, then, I actually ran, two steps at a time. My sister was standing outside Mabel’s door. By her face I knew that she had also heard. There was no need to ask. I quickly made my mind up.
‘There’s nothing,’ I said, and detailed briefly my tour of search. ‘All is quiet and undisturbed downstairs.’ May God forgive me!
She beckoned to me, closing the door softly behind her. My heart beat violently a moment, then stood still.
‘Mabel,’ she said aloud.
It was like the sentence of a judge, that one short word.
I tried to push past her and go in, but she stopped me with her arm. She was wholly mistress of herself, I saw.
‘Hush!’ she said in a lower voice. ‘I’ve got her round again with brandy. She’s sleeping quietly now. We won’t disturb her.’
She drew me farther out into the landing, and as she did so, the clock in the hall below struck half-past three. I had stood, then, thirty minutes in the corridor below. ‘You’ve been such a long time,’ she said simply. ‘I feared for you,’ and she took my hand in her own that was cold and clammy.
VIII
And then, while that dreadful house stood listening about us in the early hours of this chill morning upon the edge of winter, she told me, with laconic brevity, things about Mabel that I heard as from a distance. There was nothing so unusual or tremendous in the short recital, nothing indeed I might not have already guessed for myself. It was the time and scene, the inference, too, that made it so afflicting: the idea that Mabel believed herself so utterly and hopelessly lost—beyond recovery damned.