“I saw the wind in the curtain, Aunt Sophy: the window was open, and it blew out and almost frightened me too.”
“Oh, I could not say I was frightened,” said Mrs. Lennox, grasping Rosalind’s hand tight. “A curtain does bulge out with the wind, doesn’t it? I never thought of that. I saw something—move—I—wasn’t frightened, only a little nervous. Perhaps it was—the wind in the curtain. You are sure you were frightened too.”
“It blew right out upon me, like some one coming to meet me.”
Aunt Sophy grasped Rosalind’s hand tight. “It must have some explanation,” she said. “It couldn’t be anything super— You don’t believe in—that sort of thing, Rosalind?”
“Dear Aunt Sophy, I am sure it was the curtain. I saw it too. I would not say so if I did not feel—sure—”
“Oh, my dear, what a comfort it is to have a cool head like yours. You’re not carried away by your feelings like me. I’m so sympathetic, I feel as other people feel; to hear Johnny cry just made me I can’t tell how. It was dreadfully like some one moving, Rosalind.”
“Yes, Aunt Sophy. When the wind got into the folds, it was exactly like some one moving.”
“You are sure it was the curtain, Rosalind.”
Poor Rosalind was as little sure as any imaginative girl could be; she, too, was very much shaken by Johnny’s vision; at her age it is so much more easy to believe in the supernatural than in spectral illusions or derangement of the digestion. She did not believe that the stomach was the source of fancy, or that imagination only meant a form of suppressed gout. Her nerves were greatly disturbed, and she was as ready to see anything, if seeing depended upon an excited condition, as any young and impressionable person ever was. She was glad to soothe Mrs. Lennox with an easy explanation. But Rosalind did not believe that it was the curtain which had deceived Johnny. Neither did she believe in the baths, or in the suppressed gout. She was convinced in her mind that the child spoke the truth, and that it was some visitor from the unseen who came to him. But who was it? Dark fears crossed her mind, and many a wistful wonder. There were no family warnings among the Trevanions, or it is to be feared that reason would have yielded in Rosalind’s mind to nature and faith. As it was, her heart grew feverish and expectant. The arrival of the letters from England every morning filled her with terror. She dreaded to see a black-bordered envelope, a messenger of death.