“Yes; but it’s very odd—a great heavy curtain of black fell down in folds from the top to the floor just as I was going to step through. It seemed to make a little cloud of dust about our feet; and I felt a wind from it quite distinctly.”
“Hey, then it was a black curtain, I suppose,” said the old woman, looking hard at her.
“Yes—but why do you suppose so?”
“Sich nonsense is always black, ye know. I see’d nothing—nothing—no more there was nothing. Didn’t ye see me walk through?”
And she stepped back and forward, candle in hand, with an uncomfortable laugh.
“Oh, I know perfectly well there is nothing; but I saw it. I—I wish I hadn’t,” said the young lady.
“I wish ye hadn’t, too,” said Mildred Tarnley, pale and lowering. “Them as says their prayers, they needn’t be afeard o’ sich things; and, for my part, I never see’d anything in the Grange, and I’m an old woman, and lived here girl, and woman, good sixty years and more.”
“Let us go on, please,” said Alice.
“At your service, my lady,” said the crone, with a courtesy, and conducted her to her room.