But there was no answer, no movement. His eyes were growing accustomed to the dim light and he could have distinguished the least quiver in the little figure. He looked round. An unlighted candle and matches stood on the table. He struck a light, and again spoke to the child. But it was no use. So he tenderly removed the clothes and raised the face, which was turned round on to the pillow. It was indeed Sybil, but what a Sybil to greet him on his return! She was perfectly unconscious. In a dead swoon or faint, which for all he knew might already have lasted so long that recovery might be impossible. But he had known her faint before, poor little girl, and was at no loss what remedies to employ. He took her in his arms, chafed her cold hands and feet, bathed her forehead, and tried hard to revive her with strong smelling salts, which he found, after a search, in Miss Vyse’s sanctum. He would not, as yet, ring for assistance. He was so sure the child would best recover were she, on regaining her senses, to find herself alone with him.
In a few minutes she began to show signs of returning consciousness. At last she opened her eyes, raised herself in his arms, and looked about her with that dazed look peculiar to people when recovering from a state of insensibility. He was on the alert for this moment.
“Are you awake now, Sybil dear?” he said. “Are you pleased to see me come back?”
She turned to see his face. Oh! what a look of relief and happiness overspread her poor pale drawn features!
“Uncle Ralph,” she whispered; “dear Uncle Ralph, will you send them away?” she went on with, with a thrill of agony in her voice. “Oh, will you send them away?”
“Who, dear? What?” he asked, eagerly.
“Those dreadful people. Those ladies without any heads. They were cut off long ago, down there, in the courtyard, with that dreadful big cutting thing. And they walk about the house at night. And they come to the side of any little girl’s bed if she doesn’t go to sleep quick. And to-night they came again. And, oh! uncle, they’re coming now!” she screamed, as, happening to turn round, she caught sight of the row of headless dresses in the cupboard. And before Ralph could soothe or explain away her terror, the little creature was torn with terrible hysterics, screaming and shaking in a way pitiful to see, till she again subsided into the death-like faint from which he had but just restored her.
Now he was obliged to summon assistance. In five minutes the house was in a ferment. Such servants as had not taken advantage of their mistress’s rare absence to amuse themselves elsewhere (among which was not Mdlle. Emilie), were immediately rushing about, some suggesting one thing, some another, till Sir Ralph wished he had managed the child by himself. At last, among them, they succeeded in reviving her. This time her uncle took care to have the cupboard doors shut before she opened her eyes; and he was only too thankful to agree, notwithstanding the amazement of the scandalized servants, to her proposal that he should take her away to Miss Freer’s house, where “those dreadful people could not come.”
This was the history of the previous night’s adventures up to the time when Sir Ralph arrived at Mrs. Archer’s door with Sybil in his arms.
Cissy and Marion listened in silence to his recital, but when, having got so far, he stopped for a moment to take breath, the former had a host of questions ready for him.