“You would rather live for two hours a week than seven times twenty-four?”
“I don’t understand you.”
“No, and never will.”
It was Mr. Barringcourt’s voice, and he spoke from the door, through which he had entered.
CHAPTER X
A CONVERSATION IN SHADOWS
When Mr. Barringcourt was in it, the great black house held its mysteries and shadows; without him they seemed aggravated fourfold. Not long after the Wednesday evening music, Rosalie stood in the centre of the hall suddenly smitten with the most chilly fear she had ever experienced in her life. No noise, no sound, not even the wind without, penetrated those walls of iron marble. Shadows and silence in endless vista met her eye. Shadows and silence like a sigh congealed, changed from nothingness into reality.
Dreading the loneliness, and her own want of nerve to go upstairs, she went to the door and accosted the keeper there.
“Does this house frighten you?” she asked.
“Not at all,” he answered, most politely.
“That is strange, because I feel most frightened here. It is not haunted, is it?”