“Well, ma’am, I must go down and take down the fire, and shut-to the door, or the rats will be in from the scullery; and I’ll come up again, ma’am, in a few minutes.”
And not waiting for permission, Mildred Tarnley, who had an anxiety of another sort in her head, took the candle in her hand and left the guest at her supper by the light of the fire.
She shut the door quickly lest her departure should be countermanded, and trotted away and downstairs, but not to the kitchen.
CHAPTER XXIX.
TOM IS ORDERED UP.
When she reached the foot of the stairs that leads to the gallery on which the room occupied by Alice opens, instead of pursuing her way to the kitchen she turned into a narrow and dark passage that is hemmed in on the side opposite to the wall by the ascending staircase.
The shadows of the banisters on the panelled oak flew after one another in sudden chase as the old woman glided by, and looking up and back she stopped at the door of a small room, constructed as we see in similar old houses, under the stairs. On the panel of this she struck a muffled summons with her fist and on the third or fourth the startled voice of Tom demanded roughly from within—
“What’s that?”
“Hish!” said the old woman, through a bit of the open door.
“’Tis Mrs. Tarnley—only me.”
“Lauk, woman, ye did take a rise out o’ me. I thought ye was—I don’t know what—I was a-dreaming, I think.”