Thus stimulated, Nelly Spence, with little Margaret in her arms, went upstairs to the bedroom door. She knocked, but there was no answer. She called softly, then louder, getting frightened; finally, she opened the door and looked in. Isabel was standing in the same attitude, like a creature suddenly congealed into ice or snow. Her side face, which was visible to Nelly, was so ghastly white, and so like the face of an idiot, that the girl was dumb with panic. She went quickly forward, making a noise which at last seemed to catch Isabel’s ear. Her action, then, was as extraordinary as her looks had been. She turned suddenly round, and placed herself between the new-comer and the open desk, going back upon the latter and putting her hands behind her, as if to conceal it.
‘What do you want?’ poor Nelly supposed her to say; but it was a babble, instead of words. She was like the old people who were paralysed.
‘Oh, Isabel,’ cried Nelly, in her terror forgetting all conventional rules of respect, ‘Oh, Isabel, dinna look at me like that! I’ll rin for the doctor. You’ve had a stroke!’
‘No!’ Isabel said, with an imperative gesture; and then, though her look did not change, she struggled into utterance.
‘What do you want—what is it?’ she said.
‘It’s the man,’ cried Nelly; ‘he’s wanting his answer. But, oh, you’re fitter to be in your bed. I’ll rin for the doctor, and tell him you’re no able. Oh, what will we do?—a young thing like you!’
‘Tell him,’ said Isabel, regaining her voice by degrees—‘to tell—Mr. Stapylton—there’s no answer. You hear me, Nelly: there is—no answer. That is what he is to say.’
‘But, eh,’ said Nelly, with anxious kindliness, ‘he’ll be awfu’ angry. If you would let me help you, and find it, whatever it was——’
‘Hold your peace!’ said Isabel, harshly. ‘Go and tell him. There is—no answer. And leave me to myself. I have something here I want to do.’
‘Is she going to kill herself? Does she want him to kill her?’ Nelly said, talking to herself as she went down the stair. When she was gone, Isabel, with unsteady step, came across the room and locked the door. She caught a glimpse of herself in the glass as she passed, and wondered vaguely who it was. Then she went back to the open desk, and took out the little secret drawer, and carried it, staggering as she went, to the window. There was but one thing in it: a little broach set round with pearls, with hair in the centre, attached to a long gold pin. Adhering to the pin were still some ragged threads of the cambric in which Isabel, with her own hands, had placed it one June morning, not yet two years ago. This was the treasure shut carefully away in Horace Stapylton’s secret drawer.