‘Uncle,’ she said, after a moment’s pause, during which we had silently shaken hands, ‘will you take these keys and go down into—into—his study for me, and bring up the desks and papers which you will find in the escritoire? I do not like to send a servant.’
I took the keys which she extended to me, and, not able to trust myself to answer, kissed her forehead and left the room again. As I turned the handle of the study door I shuddered, the action so vividly recalled to me the first and last occasion upon which I had done so. The afternoon was now far advanced, and dusk was approaching: the blinds of the study windows also were pulled down, which caused the room to appear almost in darkness. As I groped my way toward the escritoire I stumbled over some article lying across my path, something which lay extended on the hearth-rug, and which even by that feeble light I could discern was a prostrated body.
With my mind full of murderous accidents, I rushed to the window and drew up the blind, when to my astonishment I found that the person over whom I had nearly fallen was no other than poor little Mrs Benson, who was lying in a dead faint before the arm-chair. Fainting women not being half so much in my line as wounded men, I felt quite uncertain in this case how to act, and without considering how the professor’s wife had come to be in the study or for what reason, my first impulse was to ring for assistance. But a second thought, which came I know not how or whence, made me lift the fragile, senseless body in my arms and carry it outside the study door into the passage before I called for help, which then I did lustily, and female servants came and bore the poor ‘quiet-looking little lady’ away to her own apartments and the care of her husband, leaving me free to execute the errand upon which I had been sent. Still, as I collected the desk and papers required by my niece, I could not help reflecting on the circumstance I have related as being a strange one, and could only account for it in my own mind by the probable fact that Mrs Benson had required some book from the late Sir Harry’s shelves, and, miscalculating her strength, had left her bedroom with the design of fetching it, and failed before she could accomplish her purpose. I heard several comments made on the occurrence, during the melancholy meal which we now called ‘dinner,’ by her husband and Lady Amabel Scott, and they both agreed with me as to the probable reason of it; and as soon as the cloth was removed the professor left us to spend the evening with his wife, who was considered sufficiently ill to require medical attendance.
We were a rather silent trio in the drawing-room—Lady Amabel, Mr Scott, and I—for ordinary occupations seemed forbidden, and every topic harped back to the miserable accident which had left the hall without a master. The servants with lengthened faces, as though attending a funeral, had dumbly proffered us tea and coffee, and we had drunk them without considering whether we required them, so welcome seemed anything to do; and I was seriously considering whether it would appear discourteous in me to leave the hall and return on the day of the funeral, when a circumstance occurred which proved more than sufficiently exciting for all of us.
I had taken the desk, papers, and keys, and delivered them into my niece’s hands, and I had ventured at the same time to ask whether it would not be a comfort to her to see Mrs Benson or some other friend, instead of sitting in utter loneliness and gloom. But Justina had visibly shrunk from the proposal; more than that, she had begged me not to renew it. ‘I sent for you, uncle,’ she said, ‘because I needed help, but don’t let any one make it a precedent for trying to see me. I couldn’t speak to any one: it would drive me mad. Leave me alone: my only relief is in solitude and prayer.’
And so I had left her, feeling that doubtless she was right, and communicating her wishes on the subject to Lady Amabel Scott, who had several times expressed a desire to gain admittance to her widowed cousin.
Judge, then, of our surprise, equal and unmitigated, when, as we sat in the drawing-room that evening, the door silently opened and Justina stood before us! If she had been the ghost of Sir Harry himself risen from the dead, she could hardly have given us a greater start.
‘Justina!’ I exclaimed, but as she advanced toward us with her eyes riveted on Lady Amabel, I saw that something more than usual was the matter, and drew backward. Justina’s countenance was deadly pale; her dark hair, unbound from the night before, flowed over the white dressing-gown which she had worn all day; and stern and rigid she walked into the midst of our little circle, holding a packet of letters in her hand.
‘Amabel Scott,’ she hissed rather than said as she fixed a look of perfect hatred on the beautiful face of her dead husband’s cousin, ‘I have detected you. You made me miserable whilst he was alive—you know it—with your bold looks and your forward manners and your shameless, open attentions; but it is my turn now, and before your husband I will tell you that—’
‘Hush, hush, Justina!’ I exclaimed, fearful what revelation might not be coming next. ‘You are forgetting yourself; this is no time for such explanations. Remember what lies upstairs.’