Mabel's Mistake

by Ann S. Stephens

"But not down stairs—not into her room!"

"I tell you," answered the girl, hoarse with passion, "I tell you that it is air, space, a storm, a whirlwind that I want; nothing else will give back the breath to my lungs!"

She went out fiercely, like the tempest her evil heart evoked.

For an instant the woman Zillah stood still, looking after her; then she rushed to the door, and called out in a loud whisper,

"Agnes, Agnes, come back!"

But the call was too late. Like a black shadow, Agnes Barker had passed out of the house.

Zillah reëntered the room, looking so white that you would not have known the face again. She turned the gas full upon her, and, taking a bowl from the cabinet, poured some colored liquid into it. She placed the bowl upon the floor, and, kneeling by it, began to lave her hands, neck, and face in the liquid, leaving them of a nutty darkness. Then she opened the window, flung out the dye she had used, and proceeded to put on a front of woolly hair, tangled with grey, over which a Madras 'kerchief was carefully folded. One by one she removed her rich garments, and directly stood out in dress, gait, and action, the colored chambermaid who had for months infested Mabel Harrington's home.

The woman went out from the room, locking the door after her. She must have been very pale, though the color upon her face revealed no trace of this white terror; but her limbs shook, her knees knocked together, and her wild eyes grew fearful as she paused in the hall, looking up and down, to see if it was empty, before she moved away.

The moment Zillah left her chamber door, all became dark in the hall, for she concealed the light in passing, and moved away as her daughter had done, still and black, like a retreating cloud.

When Zillah's face was again revealed, it was far down in the coal vaults under the house. She was upon her knees, filling a small iron furnace with lumps of charcoal, which she dropped one by one on a handful of embers that glowed in the bottom, as she had found them after late use in the laundry. As she dropped the coal, Zillah looked fearfully about from time to time; and once, when a mouse scampered across the floor close by her, she started up with a smothered shriek; but, even in her terror, blew out the lamp, which rattled in the darkness some moments after, notwithstanding the efforts that she made to still her shaking hands.