Armed with a piece of stick, she went into the hall, and gave the contents of each jar a good stir. The dining-room door was open: Dr. Rane's solitary breakfast was spread there, waiting for him. From thence, Phillis went up the staircase to the other jars. Jelly followed.
"Nasty stuff! I do hate the smell of it," muttered Phillis. "I wouldn't come up if I were you," she added to Jelly, in the low, hushed voice that we are all apt to use when near the dead.
Jelly disregarded the injunction. She believed herself safe: and was not given to following advice at the best of times. "What's that?" she exclaimed when she reached the landing.
The sheet that had been flapping for two days outside the bedroom door, now flapped, wet as ever, on the landing before the door of the ante-room. Dr. Rane considered this the better place for it now. Phillis knocked it a little with the stick to bring out its properties.
Compared with the gloom of the rest of the house, with its drawn blinds, this landing, with its wide, staring, uncovered window, was especially bright. Jelly glanced round, it might have been thought nervously, only that she was not a nervous woman. Here, in the middle of the floor, at one o'clock in the morning, her face turned to that window, had stood Mrs. Rane. If not Mrs. Rane--who?--or what?
"Phillis," whispered Jelly, "I should like to see her."
"You can't," answered Phillis.
"Nonsense. I am not afraid."
"But you can't, Jelly. She is fastened down."
"She is---- Why what do you mean?" broke off Jelly.