“Oh, Mr. King!” gasped she, in a tone of acute terror. “Don’t make jokes about it. It’s too dreadful! I never feel safe! Last night—Oh!” she paused, closing her eyes as if on the point of fainting. And Clifford saw, by the light that came through the dusty panes above the front and the back door, that her little, pinched face had grown livid at some terrible thought.
“Well, what happened last night—Oh?” said Clifford, speaking in as cheerful a tone as he could, in the hope of soothing her nerves. But instead of answering at once, little Miss Bostal, suddenly opening again her faded light eyes and staring at him with solemn intentness, led him to the door of the drawing-room, which she unlocked and threw open with a tragic gesture.
“Look in there!” whispered she.
Clifford obeyed, and saw nothing whatever; for it was dark. When, after a few minutes spent in rather uncanny silence on the part of the lady, his eyes got used to the gloom, he saw that the windows had been barricaded from the inside in the most thorough and ingenious manner with furniture and with planks nailed across from side to side.
“Why,” said he, in astonishment, “you seem to be preparing to stand a siege.”
He had already made up his mind that the eccentric little lady had gone out of her mind.
“We are besieged,” she whispered, with a look which confirmed Clifford’s hypothesis. “I can see that you don’t believe me, that you think it is only my fancy. But ask my father.”
And before Clifford could make any answer, she had quickly crossed the stone-flagged passage, had thrown open the door of the dining-room, and with a gesture invited Clifford to enter.
As the young man did so, rather fearing what sort of conversation he should have to hold with her, he was much relieved to find that the Colonel was there, sitting by the fire, with his spectacles on, reading a weekly paper. But to Clifford’s astonishment and alarm, the change in the old man was as great as in his daughter.
Colonel Bostal, although his clothes were always shabby and old-fashioned, had always retained an air of soldierly trimness, had always kept his hair closely cut and his snow-white mustache well trimmed, so that he had borne a certain air of smartness and distinction. Now he had lost every trace of it. His shoulders were bent. His hair had been allowed to grow long. His mustache hung ragged and untrimmed over a rough and straggling beard. More than this, there was in his eyes a look as pitiful in its restlessness as the haunting expression which Clifford had noticed in Miss Theodora’s.