“That’s just like you, Janet!” retorted Bessy. “To watch for that foolish Shadow, I suppose.”
“Not to watch for it. To see it.”
Bessy was afflicted with a taint of heresy. They had never been able to imbue her with the superstition pertaining to the Godolphins. Bessy had seen the Shadow more than once with her own eyes; but they were practical eyes and not imaginative, and could not be made to see anything mysterious in it. “The shadow is thrown by some tree or other,” Bessy would say. And, in spite of its being pointed out to her that there was no tree, which could cast a shadow on the spot, Bessy obstinately held to her own opinion.
Maria gazed from two sides of the turret. The view from both was magnificent. The one side overlooked the charming open country; the other, Prior’s Ash. On the third side rose Lady Godolphin’s Folly, standing out like a white foreground to the lovely expanse of scenery behind it; the fourth side looked upon the Dark Plain.
“There’s Charlotte Pain,” said Bessy.
Charlotte had returned home, it appeared, since Maria met her, and changed her attire. She was pacing the terrace of the Folly in her riding-habit, a whip in hand, and some dogs surrounding her. Maria turned towards the Dark Plain, and gazed upon it.
“Is it true,” she timidly asked, “that the Shadow has been there for the last night or two?”
Janet answered the question by asking another. “Who told you it was there, Maria?”
“I heard Margery say so.”
“Margery?” repeated Janet. “That woman appears to know by instinct when the Shadow comes. She dreams it, I think. It is true, Maria, that it has appeared again,” she continued, in a tone of unnatural composure. “I never saw it so black as it was last night.”