A lady in black

by Florence Warden

There were three large windows, two on the right hand, and one at the end of the room, in front of her. Above the shutters of those on her right the gray rays of the morning were creeping, making the marble of the heavy old mantelpiece look livid, and showing the stains of damp on the white and gold wall-paper.

This was all that the girl had time to notice when suddenly the shutters of the window at the end of the room were thrown back with a clatter of wood and a clang of iron, and she saw the green of the trees outside, and the man of whom she was in pursuit standing in the opening he had made. And then she saw that the French window was open, and knew that this was the way by which he had entered the house.

The word “Stop!” was on her lips when suddenly he seemed to stagger, and she heard him gasp and struggle for his breath. Surely this was no burglar, this man with the thin white hands, who could not run a distance of a hundred yards without inconvenience.

She tumbled over a footstool, and as she drew herself up again, she saw that she was alone in the room.

Running lightly and quickly to the window she looked out into the garden. The fresh morning breeze blew the open window against the wooden shutter with a loud crash. At the same moment she caught sight of the figure of which she had been in pursuit so long, under the trees to the right. At the noise of the crashing window the man turned quickly round, and in the pale light of the dawn Mabin saw his face distinctly.

In a moment the last trace of fear of him which had lingered in her heart disappeared. Almost as pale as a mask of the dead, the face she saw was that of a man on whom every form of suffering seemed to have left its mark. The hollow eyes were full of unspeakable sadness; the deep lines about the mouth were those of illness or sorrow rather than of age; while even the thick sprinkling of gray hairs among the brown which Mabin detected in the searching cold light of the morning told the same tale of weight of grief rather than of years.

All these things the girl’s quick young eyes saw in one brief look. Then, instinctively, she took a step forward into the garden, with some vague intention of asking him a question. But the moment she moved he turned; and disappearing from her sight behind the trees and shrubs which grew between the lawn and the spot where she stood, left her in a state of surprise and bewilderment from which it took her some minutes to recover.

It was the physical fact that she began to shiver violently in the keen morning air which at last roused her from the dazed condition into which the chase and its end had thrown her. She got into the house again, shut the window, fastened the shutter carefully, wondering by what magical means it had been opened from the outside, and stumbled along the musty drawing-room in the half-light until she reached the door.

Opening it quickly, she caught sight of Annie, the housemaid, rapidly turning the corner of the staircase above. With suspicion in her mind, she called the girl; but Annie disappeared into the upper regions of the house, paying no attention to her.

Uneasy, interested, puzzled, Mabin went slowly upstairs, started violently when the tall clock on the stairs struck four close to her ear, and stood before the open door of the room through which the intruder had passed on his way to and from hers.