Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without,
She only said: ‘My life is dreary,’
‘He cometh not,’ she said.”
Thea lifted her head, shook the golden curls back from her face, and sighed.
“I wish those terribly real lines had not come to my mind just now. ‘Old faces!’ What if they were to glimmer through that door now? That dying woman, Nance, she used to be here. What if her departing spirit chose to haunt the scene of its former life by ghostly rappings such as I have heard the old Virginia darkies whisper about in twilight hours? Ugh!” shuddering, “that dead woman, too—Norman’s first wife, who hated me so bitterly in my childhood—I hope her phantom footsteps will never tread these ‘upper floors.’ I am afraid of ‘old voices’ and ‘old footsteps’ to-night. I never was so nervous in all my life before. I can’t finish my verses with those cold chills running down my spine and my curls rising on end with terror that has no reason for it.”
She thrust the scribbled lines carelessly into a drawer of the table, and running to the crib, laid her pale, cold cheek down by the warm, rosy baby one, shutting her eyes and whimpering, distressfully:
“Alan, Alan, wake, dear, and protect your poor silly little mamma. I am frightened, but I do not know why. Surely there is nothing near to harm me, and nurse must surely be coming in a minute—Ah!” with sudden gladness, “I hear her now.”
CHAPTER LVI.
It was quite true that a footstep had paused outside the nursery-door. Thea’s quick ear had detected it, and she waited eagerly for the entrance of the nurse, as she supposed it to be, but a hand turned the knob, and as the door swung lightly ajar two women crossed the threshold and advanced into the room.