“We can go to London, where you will easily find something to do. Men always can there. And when I come of age—”
“Alice, how old are you?” I interrupted.
“Nineteen,” she answered. “By the way,” she resumed, “when I think of it—how odd!—that”—pointing to the date on the paper—“is the very month in which I too was born.”
I was too much surprised to interrupt her, and she continued:
“I never think of my age without recalling one thing about my birth, which nurse often refers to. She was going up the stair to my mother’s room, when she happened to notice a bright star, not far from the new moon. As she crossed the room with me in her arms, just after I was born, she saw the same star almost on the tip of the opposite horn. My mother died a week after. Who knows how different I might have been if she had lived!”
It was long before I spoke. The awful and mysterious thoughts roused in my mind by the revelations of the day held me silent. At length I said, half thinking aloud:
“Then you and I, Alice, were born the same hour, and our mothers died together.”
Receiving no answer, I looked at her. She was fast asleep, and breathing gentle, full breaths. She had been sitting for some time with her head lying on my shoulder and my arm around her. I could not bear to wake her.
We had been in this position perhaps for half an hour, when suddenly a cold shiver ran through me, and all at once I became aware of the far-off gallop of a horse. It drew nearer. On and on it came—nearer and nearer. Then came the clank of the broken shoe!
At the same moment, Alice started from her sleep and, springing to her feet, stood an instant listening. Then crying out, in an agonised whisper,—“The horse with the clanking shoe!” she flung her arms around me. Her face was white as the spectral moon which, the moment I put the candle out, looked in through a clear pane beside us; and she gazed fearfully, yet wildly-defiant, towards the door. We clung to each other. We heard the sound come nearer and nearer, till it thundered right up to the very door of the room, terribly loud. It ceased. But the door was flung open, and Lord Hilton entered, followed by servants with lights.