“Fetch the doctor!” he cried to the startled servant—“Lady Elton has had another shock! She must be taken to her room at once!”
“Can I be of any service?” I inquired, with a side-glance at Rimânez, who stood gravely apart, a statuesquely composed figure of silence.
“No no,—thanks all the same!” and the Earl pressed my hand gratefully—“She should not have come downstairs,—it has been too exciting for her. Sybil, don’t look at her, my dear—it will only unnerve you,—Miss Chesney, pray go to your room,—Charlotte
can do all that is possible——”
As he spoke two of the men-servants came in to carry the insensible Countess upstairs,—and as they slowly bore her [p 161] on her coffin-like couch past me, one of them drew the coverlet across her face to conceal it. But not so quickly that I could not see the awful change impressed upon it,—the indelible horror that was stamped on the drawn features,—horror such as surely never was seen except in a painter’s idea of some lost soul in torment. The eyes were rolled up and fixed in their sockets like balls of glass, and in them also was frozen the same frenzied desperate look of fear. It was a dreadful face!—so dreadful in its ghastly immovableness that I was all at once reminded of my hideous vision of the previous night, and the pallid countenances of the three phantoms that had scared me in my sleep. Lady Elton’s looks now resembled theirs! Sickened and appalled I averted my eyes, and was glad to see Rimânez taking farewell of his host, the while he expressed his regret and sympathy with him in his domestic affliction. I myself, approaching Lady Sibyl, pressed her cold and trembling hand in mine, and respectfully kissed it.
“I am deeply sorry!” I murmured—“I wish I could do anything to console you!”
She looked at me with dry calm eyes.
“Thank-you. But the doctors have always said that my mother would have another shock depriving her of speech. It is very sad; she will probably live for some years like that.”
I again expressed my sympathy.
“May I come and inquire about you all to-morrow?” I asked.