“Oh, my goodness!” interrupted Nancy, in her childish way. “I hope it does not threaten Edwin. What is the evil?—sickness?”
“Worse than that. It—is——” Signor Talcke’s attention was so absorbed by the aspect of the cards that, as it struck me, he appeared hardly to heed what he was saying. He had a long, thin black pencil in his long, thin fingers, and kept pointing to different cards as if in accordance with his thoughts, but not touching them. “There is some peculiar form of terror here,” he went on. “I cannot make it out; it is very unusual. It does not come close to you; not yet, at any rate; and it seems to surround you. It seems to be in the house. May I ask”—quickly lifting his eyes to Ann—“whether you are given to superstitious fears?”
“Do you mean ghosts?” cried Ann, and Charley Palliser burst out laughing. “Not at all, sir; I don’t believe in ghosts. I’m sure there are none in our house.”
Remembering my own terror in regard to the house, and the nervous fancy of having seen Captain Fennel in it when he was miles away, a curious impression came over me that he must surely be reading my fortune as well as Nancy’s. But I was not prepared for her next words. Truly she has no more reticence than a child.
“My sister has a feeling that the house is lonely. She shivers when she has to go into it after night-fall.”
Signor Talcke let his hands fall on the table, and lifted his face. Apparently, he was digesting this revelation. I do not think he knew the “sister” was present. For my part, disliking publicity, I slipped behind Anna Bosanquet, and stood by Charley Palliser.
“Shivers?” repeated the Italian.
“Shivers and trembles, and turns sick at having to go in,” affirmed Nancy. “So she told me when I arrived home from England.”
“If a feeling of that sort assailed me, I should never go into the house again,” said the signor.
“But how could you help it, if it were your home?” she argued.