“No,” said Hertha. They were now approaching the end where the aspens stood. Hitherto in their pacing up and down they had not gone so far, but this time Miss Norreys had purposely prolonged their walk a little. “No,” she said, stopping short and looking round her with a strange kind of curiosity, “I have something more to tell you—where does this path go to, or end, Winifred?” she broke off suddenly.
“Oh, I don’t know exactly. We never come this way,” the girl replied impatiently. “It goes along among the aspens, and then gets into a tangle. And some way further on there’s a brook that runs into a pond. It’s a wilderness sort of a place, and I hate it.”
Hertha looked at her.
“Winifred,” she said, “you have a sort of belief in the White Weeper story, otherwise you wouldn’t be so cross about it.”
“I have not, I have not indeed,” said Winifred earnestly. “But I don’t deny that the association is painful. It is said to have been down here near the pond that the unfortunate woman spent her last night at home before her husband drove her by his cruelty to take refuge in the convent at Cruxfield, where she died. And there is always a creepy, shivery feeling about here; the rest of the place is so open and bright.”
She could not repress a slight shudder as she spoke.
“Do come away,” she added.
“Not just for a moment. I want to tell you something here—on the very spot, from where—no, I will begin at the beginning,” said Miss Norreys.
And in a few minutes Winifred was in possession of the whole details of Hertha’s night’s experience.
She grew very pale, but listened without a word or gesture of interruption, till the end. Then she burst out: