“Ha!” said Miss Perfect. “Well! It is odd!” and up she got and stood very erect and grim on the hearthrug.
“Now, don’t, dear aunt, don’t be vexed with me; but I assure you I could not. I can’t make vows about the future; but I really and honestly think I shall never be a married man; it’s all—all—odious.”
“Well,” said she with an effort, “I won’t quarrel. It was not much—five years.” A little pause here she allowed for William to reflect upon its reasonableness, but he made no sign. “Not a great deal; but I won’t quarrel—there—I won’t,” and she extended her hand to him in amity, and he clasped it very affectionately.
“But I’ll speak to you seriously. I’m not fanciful, I think; I don’t believe things without evidence, and I don’t much care what very young, or very prejudiced people may think about me; that which I know I declare, and I don’t shrink an atom—no, not at the stake.”
William looked at her with respectful amazement.
“No—truth first—truth always—in the face of ridicule and bigotry. Never abandon the truth. I say I know perfectly well we are surrounded by spirits—disprove it if you can—and unequivocally have they declared themselves to me, and from that one among them, who is always near me, who is present at this moment, a friendly spirit—Henbane! Why should I hesitate to name him?—I have learned the condition, I may say, of your fate, and I won’t hide it, nor suffer you, if I can help it, to disregard it. Marry for five years you shan’t. If I be alive I’ll leave no stone unturned to prevent it; and if I’m dead, there’s nothing that spirit can do, if you so much as harbour the thought, I’ll not do to prevent it. I’ll be about you; be I good or evil, or mocking, I’ll trouble you, I’ll torment you, I’ll pick her eyes out, but I won’t suffer you to ruin yourself.”
Preposterous as was this harangue, Aunt Dinah delivered it like a Pythoness, with a vehemence that half awed her nephew.
“I’ll speak of this no more,” she said, more like herself, after two or three minutes’ silence. “I’ll not mention it—I’ll let it rest in your mind—it’s nothing to me, but for your sake, my mind’s made up though, and if I’ve power in this world or the next, you’ll hear of me, remember that, William Maubray.”
William was bound to listen to this flighty rigmarole with respect as coming from his aunt, but her spiritual thunders rather amused than alarmed him, and of Henbane he entertained, I must confess, the meanest possible opinion.
Connected with all this diablerie, indeed, there was but one phenomenon which had unpleasantly fastened upon his imagination, and that was the mysterious adventure which had befallen him in this old house of Gilroyd; when in his bed, his wrist was seized and held fast in the grasp of an unseen hand, and the intensely disagreeable sensations of that night recurred to his memory oftener than he would have cared to admit.