“Pardon, mesdames, but it is the same argument I made bold to use to madame,” interposed Flore from the background, where she stood. “There is not anything in me to give people fright.”
“I—think—it must have been,” said Mrs. Fennel, speaking slowly, “that he grew alarmed when he found it was not Flore he saw. Both times.”
“Then who was it that he did see—to startle him like that?” asked Mary Carimon.
“Why, he must have thought it was a thief,” replied Nancy. “There’s nothing else for it.”
At this juncture the argument was brought to a close by the entrance of Monsieur Jules Carimon, who had come to escort his wife and Stella Featherston home.
These curious attacks of terror were repeated; not often, but at a few days’ interval; so that at length Captain Fennel took care not to go about the house alone in the dark. He went up to bed when his wife did; he would not go to the door, if a ring came after Flore’s departure, without a light in his hand. By-and-by he improvised a lamp, which he kept on the slab.
What was it that he was scared at? An impression arose in the minds of the two or three people who were privy to this, that he saw, or fancied he saw, in the house the spectre of one who had just been carried out of it, Lavinia Preen. Nancy had no such suspicion as yet; she only thought her husband could not be well. She was much occupied about that time, having at length nerved herself to the task of looking over her poor sister’s effects.
One afternoon, when sitting in Lavinia’s room (Flore—who stayed with her for company—had run down to the kitchen to see that the dinner did not burn), Nancy came upon a small, thin green case. Between its leaves she found three one-hundred-franc notes—twelve pounds in English value. She rightly judged that it was all that remained of her sister’s nest-egg, and that she had intended to take it with her to Boulogne.
“Poor Lavinia!” she aspirated, the tears dropping from her eyes. “Every farthing remaining of the quarter’s money she left with me for housekeeping.”
But now a thought came to Nancy. Placing the case on the floor near her, intending to show it to her husband—she was sitting on a stool before one of Lavinia’s boxes—it suddenly occurred to her that it might be as well to say nothing to him about it. He would be sure to appropriate the money to his own private uses: and Nancy knew that she should need some for hers. There would be her mourning to pay for; and——