She woke at her usual hour, to sunshine and the sound of the birds’ joyous carolling this time. She lay still, thinking deeply, as she went over in her mind the strange experiences of the night. The question—“Was it all a dream?”—never for one moment occurred to her. Neither then nor at any future time did any doubt of the objective reality of what she had seen shake the intensity of the impression that had been made upon her.
Yet the fear was all gone—in fact, ever since she had thrown off the nightmare-like oppression of her fantastic dream, it had been no longer there. She felt no reluctance to stay on at White Turrets, no repulsion to the room, no shrinking even from the long terrace walk, up and down which had paced those ghostly steps—the pitiful, shadowy form of the White Weeper. But still there was much for Hertha to consider. Why had the weird family guardian appeared to her?
“She may be there every night—always, for aught I know,” thought Miss Norreys, “but why were my eyes opened to perceive her? Why did she appeal to me, as I feel convinced she did? Why not to self-willed Winifred, the cause of all the trouble and anxiety? Possibly she could not: perhaps Winifred is so constituted that no spirit could make its presence known to her. It must be that, I suppose. But what can I do? Winifred must know by this time that I do not sympathise with her mania for ‘a career,’ and that she has involved me in her folly in a far from pleasant way. However, I suppose I must speak to her more plainly and strongly than I have done—that is the only response I can make to you, poor troubled spirit!”
And before she began to dress she stood for a moment at the window, gazing along the path, now gleaming and brilliant in the clear morning sunshine, and while she did so, a sudden idea struck her. She would tell, in the first place at least, no one, except Winifred, of what she had seen.
“It shall be a confidence between her and me,” she decided, “and as such it may impress her the more—far more than if I told them all, and she heard every one cross-questioning me about it.” And no sooner had she thus resolved than she was conscious of a curious sensation of satisfaction, as if for the first time she had fully grasped the nature of the commission entrusted to her to perform.
She did not look quite like herself that morning when she went down-stairs. Her beautiful eyes were less clear and open; she seemed tired and slightly preoccupied, though she did her best to hide any signs of disturbance.
But Mrs Maryon and her two younger daughters were keen sighted, much more so than Winifred, and Hertha was assailed with affectionate inquiries as to whether she had a headache, or had she not slept well, etc, which she parried as best she could.
There were two or three letters for her—one, a large, rather thick one, in Mr Montague’s handwriting, she looked at irresolutely, then put it into her pocket unopened.
“It must be in reply to the long letter I sent him two days after I got here,” she said to herself. “I am glad he is back in England, but I think I would rather not know what he says till after I have spoken to Winifred.”
A special and uninterrupted talk with one member of a fairly large party, even if that party be a family one, is not always easy to achieve unobserved, though in a country-house it would seem a simple enough matter. But of late Winifred had rather avoided than sought Miss Norreys’s society. Some idea of the possible causes of complaint Hertha might believe herself to have against her for the conduct which Winifred was beginning to realise as not being, in appearance at least, candid, made the girl less at ease than heretofore in her friend’s society. She did not as yet allow this to herself: she would not own, even in thought, that she had been to blame. She “put it all down” to this visit of Miss Norreys to White Turrets, where, though on one side the favourable impression her friend had made on Mrs Maryon and the others was gratifying to Winifred, on the other it was somewhat irritating.