Taking the candle, he went into the dining-room. Mr. Dare followed. The worst thought that occurred to Mr. Dare was, that Anthony might have taken more wine than was good for him, and had fallen down, helpless, in the dining-room. Unhappily, Anthony had been known so to transgress. Only a week or two before——but let that pass: it has nothing to do with us now.
Mr. Dare followed Joseph in. At the upper end of the room, near the window, lay some one on the ground. It was surely Anthony. He was lying on his side, his head thrown back, his face up-turned. A ghastly face, which sent poor Joseph's pulses bounding on with a terrible fear as he looked down at it. The same face which had scared Betsy when she looked down.
"He is stark dead!" whispered Joseph, with a shiver, to Mr. Dare.
Mr. Dare, his own life-blood seeming to have stopped, bent over his son by the light of the candle. Anthony appeared to be not only dead, but cold. In his terrible shock, his agitation, he still remembered that it was well, if possible, to spare the sight to his wife and daughter. Mrs. Dare and Adelaide, alarmed by Betsy's screams, had run downstairs, and were now hastening into the room.
"Go back! go back!" cried Mr. Dare, fencing them away with his hands. "Adelaide, you must not come in! Julia," he added to his wife, in tones of imploring entreaty, "go upstairs, and keep back Adelaide."
He half led, half pushed them across the hall. Mrs. Dare had never in all her life seen his face as she saw it now—a face of terror. She caught the fear; vaguely enough, it must be confessed, for she had not heard Anthony's name, as yet, mentioned in connection with it.
"What is it?" she asked, holding on by the balustrades. "What is there in the dining-room?"
"I don't know what it is," replied Mr. Dare, from between his white lips. "Go upstairs! Adelaide, go up with your mother."
Mr. Dare was stopped by more screams. Whilst he was preventing immediate terror to his wife and daughter, the lady's maid, her curiosity excited beyond repression, had slipped into the dining-room, and peeped over Joseph's shoulder. What she had expected to see she perhaps could not have stated; what she did see was so far worse than her wildest fears, that she lost sense of everything, except the moment's fear; and shriek after shriek echoed from her.
A scene of confusion ensued. Mrs. Dare tried to force her way to the room; Adelaide followed her; Betsy began bewailing Mr. Anthony, by name, in wild words. And the sleepers, above, came flocking out of their chambers, with trembling limbs and white faces.