She sprang back from the window, dropped on her knees, with her face hidden in her hands, and was hardly conscious till sounds of the others returning made her rally her powers so as to prevent all inquiries or surmises. It was Mrs. Labadie and Pauline Dunord, the former to see that all was well with the Prince before repairing to the Cockpit.
“How pale you are!” she exclaimed. “Have you seen anything?”
“I—It may be nothing. He is dead!” stammered Anne.
“Oh then, ’tis naught but a maid’s fancies,” said the nurse good-humouredly. “Miss Dunord is in no mind for the sports, so she will stay with His Highness, and you had best come with me and drive the cobwebs out of your brain.”
“Indeed, I thank you, ma’am, but I could not,” said Anne.
“You had best, I tell you, shake these megrims out of your brain,” said Mrs. Labadie; but she was in too great haste not to lose her share of the amusements to argue the point, and the two young women were left together. Pauline was in a somewhat exalted state, full of the sermon on the connection of the Church with the invisible world.
“You have seen one of your poor dead,” she said. “Oh, may it not be that he came to implore you to have pity, and join the Church, where you could intercede and offer the Holy Sacrifice for him?”
Anne started. This seemed to chime in with proclivities of poor Peregrine’s own, and when she thought of his corpse in that unhallowed vault, it seemed to her as if he must be calling on her to take measures for his rest, both of body and of spirit. Yet something seemed to seal her tongue. She could not open her lips on what she had seen, and while Pauline talked on, repeating the sermon which had so deeply touched her feelings, Anne heard without listening to aught besides her own perturbations, mentally debating whether she could endure to reveal the story to Father Crump, if she confessed to him, or whether she should write to her uncle; and she even began to compose the letter in her own mind, with the terrible revelation that must commence it, but every moment the idea became more formidable. How transfer her own heavy burthen to her uncle, who might feel bound to take steps that would cut young Archfield off from parents, sister, child, and home. Or supposing Dr. Woodford disbelieved the apparition of to-night, the whole would be discredited in his eyes, and he might suppose the summer morning’s duel as much a delusion of her fancy as the autumn evening’s phantom, and what evidence had she to adduce save Charles’s despair, Peregrine’s absence, and what there might be in the vault?
Yet if all that Father Crump and Pauline said was true, that dear uncle might be under a fatal delusion, and it might be the best hope for herself—nay, even for that poor restless spirit—to separate herself from them. Here was Pauline talking of the blessedness of being able to offer prayers on ‘All Souls’ Day’ for all those of whose ultimate salvation there were fears, or who might be in a state of suffering. It even startled her as she thought of her mother, whom she always gave thanks for as one departed in faith and fear. Would Father Crump speak of her as one in a state of inevitable ignorance to be expiated in the invisible world? It shocked the daughter as almost profane. Yet if it were true, and prayers and masses could aid her?
Altogether Anne was in a mood on which the voices broke strangely returning from the supper full of news. Jane Humphreys was voluble on her various experiments. The nuts had burnt quietly together, and that was propitious to the Life-guardsman, Mr. Shaw, who had shared hers; but on the other hand, the apple-paring thrown over her shoulder had formed a P, and he whom she had seen in the vista of looking-glasses had a gold chain but neither a uniform nor a P in his name, and Mrs. Buss declared that it meant that she should be three times married, and the last would be an Alderman, if not Lord Mayor; and Mrs. Royer was joking Miss Bridgeman on the I of her apple-paring, which could stand for nothing but a certain Incle among ‘the Cockpit folk,’ who was her special detestation.