“If there are people in the world as hideous—and monstrous as this—let them kill me if they want to. I would rather be killed than live! They would have to kill me!” and she said it in a frenzy of defiance of all mad and base things on earth.
Her peril seemed to force her thought to delve into unknown dark places in her memory and dig up horrors she had forgotten—newspaper stories of crime, old melodramas and mystery romances, in which people disappeared and were long afterwards found buried under floors or in cellars. It was said that the Berford Place houses, winch were old ones, had enormous cellars under them.
“Perhaps other girls have disappeared and now are buried in the cellars,” she thought.
And the dreadful young voice added aloud.
“Because they would have to kill me.”
One of the Persian kittens curled up in the basket wakened because he heard it and stretched a sleepy paw and mewed at her.
Coombe House was one of the old ones, wearing somewhat the aspect of a stately barrack with a fine entrance. Its court was enclosed at the front by a stone wall, outside which passing London roared in low tumult. The court was surrounded by a belt of shrubs strong enough to defy the rain of soot which fell quietly upon them day and night.
The streets were already lighted for the evening when Mademoiselle Vallé presented herself at the massive front door and asked for Lord Coombe. The expression of her face, and a certain intensity of manner, caused the serious-looking head servant, who wore no livery, to come forward instead of leaving her to the footmen.
“His lordship engaged with—a business person—and must not be disturbed,” he said. “He is also going out.”