At last she struck a match, and kindled the light once more, and fell to work again. A minute sufficed to heap the little furnace, and a faint crackling at the bottom gave proof that the living embers underneath were taking effect. When satisfied of this, she put out her lamp, took up the furnace, and, though it was still hot from recent use, placed one hand over the draft, that the fire might not ignite too rapidly, and crept out of the cellar. Any person awake in the house, might have traced the dark progress of this woman by a faint crackle, and the sparks that shot now and then up through the black mass of coal, which was kindling so fast, that the hand which she still kept upon the draft was almost blistered.
She moved along the hall, noiselessly and rapid as death. The sparks that leaped up from the furnace, gave all the light she had, and more than she desired; for many a time before had she threaded the same passage, rehearsing the terrible deed she was enacting. She paused directly in front of Mabel Harrington's boudoir, and laid her hand upon the latch without a moment's search, as if it had been broad daylight.
She did not pause in the boudoir, but stole through, shuddering beneath the pale light of that alabaster lamp, as if it had distilled poison over her.
There was no stir in the chamber when she entered it. The low regular breathing of some one asleep upon the bed which stood entirely in shadow, was all the sound that reached her when she paused to listen. From without she could hear nothing, not even the sharp whisperings of the wind; for that day her own hands had calked the windows with singular care, and besides that, rich curtains muffled them from floor to ceiling.
Zillah dared not look toward the bed, but with the stealthy movements of a panther she crept to the fire-place sealed up with a marble slab, and placing the furnace on the hearth, slunk away from the chamber and through the boudoir, closing both doors cautiously behind her.
After that, she staggered away into the darkness.
CHAPTER LXXIX
UNDER THE ICE.
Agnes Barker rushed into the cold night so wrathfully that even the shadow that followed her seemed vital with hate. On they walked together—the girl and this weird shadow—blackening the snow with momentary darkness as they passed; the one tossing out her arms with unconscious gesticulation, the other mocking her, grotesquely, from the crusted snow.
She descended from the eminence upon which the house stood, into the hollow where Lina and Ralph had paused on the first day of their confessed love. Over the spot made holy by the feelings of this beautiful epoch, she trod her way in mad haste, reckless of the cold, which, but for the fiery strife within, must have pierced her to the vitals; Zillah had aroused her from sleep but half-robed—her dress had been loosened as she lay down, and the sharp wind lifted particles of snow with every gust, sweeping them into her bosom and over her uncovered head. Neither shawl nor mantle shielded her, but thus all exposed as she had risen from her sleep, she rushed on, mad as a wild animal which save in form, for that fatal moment, she was.