“There is nothing more to tell. Peculiar sounds, as if caused by the wind, are heard. Moaning, sighing, rushing—the passages at times seem alive with them. It is said to come as a reminder to the Godolphins of a worse sound that will sometime be heard, when Ashlydyat shall be passing away from them.”
“But you don’t believe that?” uttered Maria.
“Child, I can scarcely tell you what I believe,” was Janet’s answer. “I can only pray that the one-half of what my heart prompts me to fear, may never take place in reality. That the noise does come, and without any apparent cause, is not a matter of belief, or disbelief: it is a fact, patent to all who have inhabited Ashlydyat. The Verralls can tell you so: they have had their rest broken by it.”
“And it is not caused by the wind?”
Janet shook her head in dissent. “It has come on the calmest and stillest night, when there has not been a breath of air to move the leaves of the ash-trees.”
Bessy turned from her pastime of watching Charlotte Pain: she had taken little part in the conversation.
“I wonder at you, Janet. You will be setting Maria against Ashlydyat. She will be frightened to come into it, should it lapse to George.”
Maria looked at her with a smile. “I should have no fear with him, superstitious or otherwise. If George took me to live in the catacombs, I could be brave with him.”
Ever the same blind faith; the unchanged love for her husband. Better, far better, that it should be so!
“For my part, I am content to take life and its good as I find it, and not waste my time in unprofitable dreams,” was the practical remark of Bessy. “If any ill is to come, it must come; but there’s no need to look out for it beforehand.”