Now, or never. Sitting there alone with Mrs. Gass, surrounded by these solemn influences, Jelly thought the hour and the opportunity had come. Bear with the secret much longer, she could not; it would wear her to a skeleton, worry her into a fever perhaps; and she had said to herself several times that Mrs. Gass, with her plain common sense, would be the best person to confide in. Yes, she mentally repeated, now or never.
"Was it the fever that cut her off?" began Jelly, significantly.
"Was it the fever that cut her off?" echoed Mrs. Gass. "What d'you mean, Jelly?"
Jelly turned to the speaker, and plunged into her tale. Beginning, first of all, with the apparition she had certainly seen, and how it was--staying late at Ketler's, and Dinah's having left the blind undrawn--that she had come to see it. There she paused.
"Why, what on earth d'you mean?" sharply demanded Mrs. Gass. "Saw Mrs. Rane's ghost! Don't be an idiot, Jelly."
"Yes, I saw it," repeated Jelly, with quiet emphasis. "Saw it as sure as I see them standing there now to bury her. There could be no mistake. I never saw her plainer in life. It was at one o'clock in the morning, I say, Mrs. Gass; and she was screwed down at twelve: an hour before it."
"Had you taken a little too much beer?" asked Mrs. Gass, after a pause, staring at Jelly to make sure the question would not also apply to the present time. But the face that met hers was strangely earnest: too much so even to resent the insinuation.
"It was her ghost, poor thing: and I'm afraid it'll walk till justice lays it. I never knew but one ghost walk in all my life, Mrs. Gass: and he had been murdered."
Mrs. Gass made no rejoinder. She was absorbed in looking at Jelly. Jelly went on--
"It's said there's many that walk: the world's full of such tales; but I never knew but that one. When people are put to an untimely end, and buried away out of sight, and their secrets with 'em, it stands to reason that they can't rest quiet in their graves. She won't."