The door bell at the Park was a peculiar one—it had a solemn cathedral sort of sound that rolled through the whole house, and it was only used by strangers or visitors on ceremony. Both of us started violently when we heard it; it came upon our consultations like a sudden alarm of battle.
“It rains as bad as ever; on such a day who can ring the great bell at our door?” cried Aunt Milly. “God help us! if my father walked in at that door, I should not feel it was anything out of the way. Nothing would surprise me now.”
I could not make her any answer. We both sat perfectly silent, waiting for what was to come. As if to heighten the excitement of the moment, the rain, which had been falling steadily all day, suddenly became violent, and dashed against the windows in torrents. Through all this we could hear the great door opened and the sound of voices. My thoughts travelled into the great vacant drawing-room where these sounds could not fail to reach Miss Mortimer within her screen. What was she doing? Could she be sitting there still, dumb and desperate, listening but not looking, with a pride and resistance more dreadful in its self-control than the wildest passions! I trembled with suspense and wondering anxiety in spite of myself. As for Aunt Milly, the miniatures she was looking at fell out of her hands. She covered her eyes for an instant, and then lifted her scared and pallid face to the door, as if she could hear the approaching sounds better, for having her eyes fixed that way. There was a pause that I suppose did not endure a minute, but which looked like an hour. Then a soft tap at the door; then Ellis entered, looking half as pale and anxious as we did—vaguely frightened he could not tell how.
“Miss Milly,” he said, in a hasty troubled voice, “the gentleman is here as wants Miss Mortimer; what am I to do?”
The old mistress and the old servant looked at each other. The man did not know anything, but he knew the involuntary suspicion and dread that had somehow gathered about the house.
“What are we to do? God help us, Ellis, I know no more than the baby!” cried Aunt Milly under her breath.
She was carried by her excitement beyond her usual discretion. I interposed as I best could.
“Let it come to the crisis!” cried I, not being well aware what I said; “it must be best to know clearly Aunt Milly—hush!—recollect, you know nothing—let him go in.”
She made a convulsive pause and restrained herself; and then the usual keeping up of appearances recurred to her mind. “My sister’s voice! you know, Milly,” she said, turning to me as if with a kind of apology,—“who—who is it, Ellis?”
“It’s—it’s the foreign gentleman, ma’am,” said Ellis, with a sympathetic faltering of his voice.