With the avidity of one perishing from thirst, she scooped up the water and drank again and again, each draft she took seeming to infuse new life within her veins; and, at last satisfied, she tried to master the horrible feeling of dread that was overpowering her, and to make out her position.
“Let me go back,” she said, forcing herself to the point. “I will not be alarmed at what is perhaps some trifling accident. Now, then—I went to my bedroom to be ready when Gil should come. I was feverish and thirsty, and I drank from the jug upon my table. Then I grew worse, and Janet came to try on my dress. I must have lain down and had some frightful dream.
“Yes, I remember it now: and I tried on the dress in a half-stupefied way. Nay, it must have been Janet as I lay half asleep, half mad—
“Oh, God!” she moaned, “am I half mad now?”
There was a hollow, echoing whisper, and she cowered there trembling for a time, but, recovering, she forced herself to go on.
“I was lying there ill and quite asleep, and—yes—no—yes—I have some recollection of cries—a terrible shock—and—it must be—it must be.”
She pressed her hands to her head, and rocked herself to and fro, for her reason was on the verge of being shattered, so horrible were her thoughts.
By degrees, though, she grew calmer, and she once more tried to unravel the mystery of the thick darkness around, and to carry this out she again drank from the pool. Then her hands touched stones and timber; and at last, after a long struggle, she fully realised the facts. There could be no doubt of it, for she recognised again the peculiar odour of the powder.
This had come while she slept, then, overwhelming her so suddenly that she had not awakened from the stupor in which she was plunged. The powder had exploded, and she must have fallen with the ruins down into the vault where her father had a store.
She made a brave struggle against the feelings that seemed to bear down with overwhelming violence, ready to snatch her reason away, but she was only weak, and at last, with a burst of hysterical sobbing, she sank back completely overcome. It seemed as if the drugged sleep into which she had been plunged by Mother Goodhugh’s distilments had returned, for her reason became overclouded, and then all was blank.