'So soon as a calamity is within twelve hours, the blood comes upon my forehead, as they found me in the morning—it is a sign.'
The old man then drew back slowly, and disappeared behind the curtains at the foot of the bed, and I saw no more of him during the rest of that odious night.
So long as this apparition remained before me, I never doubted its being supernatural. I don't think mortal ever suffered horror more intense. My very hair was dripping with a cold moisture. For some seconds I hardly knew where I was. But soon a reaction came, and I felt convinced that the apparition was a living man. It was no process of reason or philosophy, but simply I became persuaded of it, and something like rage overcame my terrors.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PONY CARRIAGE
So soon as daylight came, I made a swift cold water toilet, and got out into the open air, with a solemn resolution to see the hated interior of that bed-room no more. When I met Lord Chelford in his early walk that morning, I'm sure I looked myself like a ghost—at all events, very wild and seedy—for he asked me, more seriously than usual, how I was; and I think I would have told him the story of my adventure, despite the secret ridicule with which, I fancied, he would receive it, had it not been for a certain insurmountable disgust and horror which held me tongue-tied upon the affair.
I told him, however, that I had dreamed dreams, and was restless and uncomfortable in my present berth, and begged his interest with the housekeeper to have my quarters changed to the lower storey—quite resolved to remove to the 'Brandon Arms,' rather than encounter another such night as I had passed.
Stanley Lake did not appear that day; Wylder was glowering and abstracted—worse company than usual; and Rachel seemed to have quite passed from his recollection.
While Rachel Lake was, as usual, busy in her little garden that day, Lord Chelford, on his way to the town, by the pretty mill-road, took off his hat to her with a smiling salutation, and leaning on the paling, he said—
'I often wonder how you make your flowers grow here—you have so little sun among the trees—and yet, it is so pretty and flowery; it remains in my memory as if the sun were always shining specially on this little garden.'