“There isn’t any little girl. Haven’t you heard?”
“Heard? No. Why, I saw her only yesterday.” The look she gave me—I was sure of it now—was full of alarm.
“The little girl—she was the sweetest child I ever saw—died just two months ago of pneumonia.”
“But she couldn’t have died.” I was a fool to let this out, but the shock had completely unnerved me. “I tell you I saw her yesterday.”
The alarm in her face deepened. “That is Mrs. Maradick’s trouble. She believes that she still sees her.”
“But don’t you see her?” I drove the question home bluntly.
“No.” She set her lips tightly. “I never see anything.”
So I had been wrong, after all, and the explanation, when it came, only accentuated the terror. The child was dead—she had died of pneumonia two months ago—and yet I had seen her, with my own eyes, playing ball in the library; I had seen her slipping out of her mother’s room, with her doll in her arms.
“Is there another child in the house? Could there be a child belonging to one of the servants?” A gleam had shot through the fog in which I was groping.
“No, there isn’t any other. The doctors tried bringing one once, but it threw the poor lady into such a state she almost died of it. Besides, there wouldn’t be any other child as quiet and sweet-looking as Dorothea. To see her skipping along in her dress of Scotch plaid used to make me think of a fairy, though they say that fairies wear nothing but white or green.”