“Did she never tell you what she had felt?” And Hertha repeated what Winifred had told her.
Celia shook her head.
“No, she never told me. She knows I have always been so frightened about it. But—I scarcely see why she came, or tried to come, to Winifred herself, when the point was gained and she had given in?”
“Ah—I must tell you the rest, and this I think impressed your sister most of all. A day or two after I returned to London, after that Easter time—I went, at her request, to collect her things and pay some money she thought due to the people she had lodged with. What do you think I found? A deserted house—in the possession of the police. There had been a fire the night but one before, caused, no doubt, by the people themselves, for they were a very undesirable lot. They had all escaped, however, as they lived below; but the upper rooms, the very rooms Winifred had had, were literally gutted—in a state of black, charred desolation. We cannot say, of course, but when I explained my errand, the policeman said the lady should be thankful that she had been prevented returning. ‘Ten to one if she could have been got out alive,’ he said.”
“Oh, Hertha!” exclaimed Celia, horror-struck. “And you told Winifred?”
“Yes, though not immediately. She was still ill when it happened. But I think it impressed her exceedingly. Still, as she has not told you about it, it may be as well never to mention it.”
“I will never do so,” said Celia. “But I think I shall never feel afraid of the White Weeper again.”
Then she went on to tell her friend about Louise and Lennox in their own house, their marriage having taken place the preceding autumn.
“They are as happy as the good people in a fairy tale,” she said.
When Celia went home the next time—a little more than a year after she had joined Miss Norreys, she took with her an astonishing piece of news. Hertha, Winifred’s typical, self-dependent woman, Hertha, was going to be married!