"Enough! enough!" cried Adeline, wildly: "Oh! this is too much!—you will drive me mad!"
"Not a bit of it, ma'am," returned Tidkins. "A clever and strong-minded lady like you shouldn't give way in this manner. All I wanted was the casket; and——"
"And what?" said Adeline, speaking in a tone as if she were suffocating.
"And I got it," was the answer. "But I rolled the body back again into the pond; and there it'll stay—unless you force me to drag it up once more, and bring it to the Hall."
"No: never—never!" screamed Lady Ravensworth. "Were you to perpetrate such a horrible deed, I would die that moment—I would stab myself to the heart—or I would leap from this window on the stones beneath! Beware, dreadful man—or you will drive me mad! But if you require gold—if you need money, speak: let me purchase your immediate departure from this house."
"That does not suit my book, ma'am," answered Tidkins. "Here I must remain while it suits the pleasure of my master," he added, with a low chuckling laugh.
"And what business keeps your master here? what wickedness does he meditate? why does he force his presence upon me?" cried Adeline, rapidly.
"I don't know any thing about that," answered the Resurrection Man. "All I have to say can be summed up in a word: leave your own chamber and act as becomes the mistress of the house. Preside at your own table—this very day too;—or, by Satan! ma'am, I'll take a stroll by the pond in the evening, and then run back to the Hall with a cry that I have seen a human hand appear above the surface!"
Having thus expressed his appalling menaces, the Resurrection Man hurried from the apartment.
Lady Ravensworth pressed her hands to her brow, murmuring, "O heavens! I shall go mad—I shall go mad!"