On a certain evening Mr. and Mrs. Elverton, and the friends who were staying with them, had returned late from a dinner-party given at the Anchorage. The visitors had withdrawn to their several apartments for the night; but Mr. and Mrs. Elverton, as was their daily custom, remained for a few minutes behind them in the drawing-room to discuss the events of the day before retiring to rest.
While, with the buoyancy of youth, love and joy, they were sitting talking and laughing together, a footman entered the room and announced a stranger who imperatively demanded to see Mr. Elverton, and would take no denial, although Charles had explained that it was too late for his master to be disturbed.
Mr. Elverton though the most courteous of gentlemen, could not be said to have yielded so much to courtesy as to curiosity to know who this importunate stranger might be, when he ordered Charles to show the unseasonable visitor into the library, whither he himself immediately proceeded.
The stranger was a woman of majestic presence, whose tall, commanding figure was wrapped in a long black cloak; and whose unknown features were concealed beneath a thick black veil. Thus much only the servants saw of her as Charles showed her into the library, whither she was instantly followed by Mr. Elverton.
Charles, in the conscientious discharge of the principal duty of his office, applied his ear to the keyhole; but his virtue was not rewarded by any satisfactory result. He only heard, a low exclamation of astonishment from his master, a muttered reply from the stranger, and then the sound of their steps retreating towards a distant part of the room, where the words of their conversation were quite inaudible.
The ingenuity and perseverance of Mr. Charles was really worthy of a better cause and a greater success. He shut his eyes, plugged the orifice of his left ear with his little finger, and concentrated his five senses into the hearing of his right ear, which he plastered to the keyhole.
Alas! he could make out not a single syllable of that mysterious interview; and the few sounds that he heard only tortured his curiosity—these sounds were occasionally a deep, half-smothered groan from his master, and a sharp, sarcastic laugh from the stranger.
This secret interview lasted for about an hour, at the end of which Charles heard the footsteps coming down the room towards the door, and deemed it proper to withdraw from his post of observation. But Mr. Charles’ limbs were so stiff and numb from long kneeling, that it was no easy matter to rise, while at the same time there was imminent danger of his being discovered in the act of listening when his master should open the door.
With a last desperate effort he struggled upon his feet; and then, as fortune crowns us when we least expect her to do so, he had the satisfaction of overhearing something. It was the voice of his master, saying, in a tone of anguish:
“You are a fiend! a fiend! H— never cast forth a blacker one to blast this fair earth!”