“What do you know?” repeated Ursula, with persistent stress.
Hephzibah hesitated. Before her rose the image of Adeline, fringe and all, giving orders in the store-room. She turned suddenly.
“Know, Mevrouw?” she said. “What should I know? A great deal less than you, anyway. I’m only a poor servant. I suppose it’s some of Satan’s doing. Ah, he’s mighty strong, is Satan—mighty strong!” She slipped away towards the glimmer from the passage, muttering, “Mighty, mighty strong,” and so stole from the room.
Ursula made no effort to retain her. The door fell to, and the black silence seemed to thicken. Ursula stood quite still. Involuntarily she listened, scornful of herself. Something creaked in the next room, or near her—her heart leaped into her throat. With an exclamation of impatience she threw open the intervening door.
She had not entered these two death-chambers since her illness. The inner one was empty and damply chill. Here the shutters were thrown back, and through the gaunt window a bluish grayness fell across the deeper dark. Ursula’s figure struck against the dim twilight in a great black bar.
After a moment’s hesitation she walked to the window and gazed up into the night. Amid a confusion of tumbled clouds an occasional star lay peeping, like a diamond through black lace. One of them, close above her, seemed to be watching steadily.
“Otto,” said Ursula, in a firm whisper, “I am doing my best. I am trying to keep my promise. I don’t know how God judges me. I don’t know. Otto, I am doing my best.”
She stood for some time thinking. Then she shivered, as if suddenly realizing the clammy cold all about her, and hurried away.
In the corridor, just as the cheerful lamplight was broadening to greet her, she met Aunt Louisa, who emerged in a great hurry from her own private sitting-room. Aunt Louisa was evidently in one of her “sinful fits,” as Hephzibah called them. (Hephzibah called “sinful” whatever was distasteful to herself.) The Freule’s left hand held a letter, and her right hand an envelope. She cried out as soon as she caught sight of Ursula:
“Ursula, I must have my interest! I didn’t ask you back for the capital—not even when Otto died. But, Ursula, I must have my interest.”