“Now I am ready, if you are determined I shall go somewhere with you.”
The figure turned itself about and opened the door into the saloon. Claire followed, keeping far behind those silent feet, and thus they walked through that grim room over which touches of beauty had never been thrown by a woman’s keeping.
Claire followed into another chamber and was shut in darkness. It was the rock side of the house, without moonlighted windows. Mademoiselle de Granville had left her, and she stood confused, forgetting which way she should turn to the door-latch of release. The absence of Dollard now rushed back over her, and helped the dark to heap her with terrors. The sanest people have felt sparks of madness flash across the brain. One such flash created for her a trap in the floor to swallow her to the depths of the island.
Directly her surroundings were lighted by a door opening to an inner room. A priest stood there in black cassock, his face smooth and dark, his eyes dark and attentive. He was not tonsured, but with hair clustering high upon his head he looked like Dollard grown to sudden middle age, his fire burnt to ashes, his shoulders bowed by penances, his soul dried as a fern might be dried betwixt the wooden lids of his breviary. Behind him stood an altar, two tall candles burning upon it, and above the altar hung a crucifix. She took note of nothing else in the room.
“Pardon me, father; I am lost in the house. Mademoiselle de Granville brought me here and has left me.”
“Yes.” His voice had depth and volume, and was like Dollard’s voice grown older. “She brought you at my request.”
“At your request, father? Where is Mademoiselle de Granville?”
“In that closet,” he replied, showing a door at the corner of his chapel room. “My poor lifeless sister is at her devotions.”
“I see my way now. With your permission I will go back,” said Claire. This unwholesome priest like a demon presentation of Dollard made her shudder.
“Stop, Mademoiselle Laval.”