To one that ached with fear.
The shadows of solitude and dreariness had ever hung like ill-omened clouds over Garsworth Grange, but now the shadows were deepened by the presence of death. To the eerie atmosphere of the old house had been added a new element of fear, and every lonely room, every shadowy corner and every echoing corridor seemed to be filled with a weird feeling of the supernatural. Jellicks and Munks were not by any means imaginative folk, but even they felt the influence of the spell of horror which seemed to brood over the lonely mansion, and conversed together in low whispers with furtive looks around as if expecting a whole host of goblins and spirits to start forth from the brooding shadows. Miss Cassy and Una both kept to their rooms, mutually trying to cheer one another, and the only person who seemed to move about at all was Patience Allerby, who glided through the bare rooms and dusky passages like an unquiet ghost. And not unlike a ghost did she look with her haggard face, burning eyes, and slim figure, carrying with her the paper she had stolen from the sanctity of the dead man's chamber, the paper which hidden in her bosom seemed to her excited fancy to feel bitterly cold as if its dead owner had grasped it with his chill hand to drag it forth from its hiding-place. True, the paper would benefit her son, and it was legally his, still the memory of that stealthy theft in the dark night, while yet the corpse lay stiffly on the bed, seemed to haunt her conscious-stricken soul like a crime.
And amid all this horror and dreariness which clung round the place, the dead man lay in his coffin in the dismal room he had occupied during life. No flowers were placed on the bed or on the coffin, no relatives wept over the white set face to melt its frozen apathy with hot tears, no voice of lamentation was heard bewailing a good man's fate; lonely in death as he had been in life, Randal Garsworth, who had sacrificed the pleasures of this earth to a delusion, lay unloved and uncared for in the silent room as if he had lain for generations in the vault of his ancestors.
Sometimes when Munks or Jellicks had taken their turns in watching the body, Patience would come for a time and, kneeling down, pray for the dead man's soul; but the sneering look on the still countenance seemed to mock her prayers and she fled away in horror at the thoughts that gibing smile provoked.
On the second day after the death of the squire, a visitor came to see Patience, one whom she half expected, and the housekeeper was not at all astonished at beholding Beaumont standing at the door of her room, about four o'clock in the afternoon.
"Why do you come here?" she asked half in anger, half in dread.
"Because I want to speak to you," replied Beaumont, leisurely closing the door and taking a seat. "I know it is not quite the thing to pay visits so soon after a death, but Miss Challoner and her aunt are, I believe shut up in their rooms, Munks and that serpent you call Jellicks are safe in the kitchen, so I came in at the back of the house quite unperceived to see you."
"What about?" she asked stolidly.
"I think you can pretty well guess," he replied coolly, "about the conversation I had with you the other day--I want your answer."
"The answer is--no."