“Afraid!” she whispered still. “You’re only a fool. You’re only a boy. Your life’s before you. Why would you stay? Hoping to profit, and be rich, when that old man is dead? Is that why you’d stay? There’s no price that’s worth your life—to you. Why did you ever come to such a house, or, knowing them for what they are, remain?”
“They are my folk,” I muttered, thinking her—from the wildness of her look, the sudden fevered shining of her eyes, the ceaseless fluttering of her thin hands—distraught from the terrors of the house; recalling how, day after day, she sat by me at table, uttering not a word, and addressed by no one; going then from table to be seen no more, till the next meal was served. She had been no more to me than a pale grey shadow in the house of shadows.
Nor had I felt in her more interest than to ask Oliver carelessly how she spent her days; and he had answered, “Hid in her room for the most, haunting the garden; she’s lifeless, bloodless, the wraith of a maid.”
“They are my folk,” then, I muttered, staring at her.
“Your folk! Are you as they?” she whispered still. “You think only of the money the old man has, and care not how ’twas come by. You’ll smile and fawn on him—that man, that evil old man—as his son smiles and fawns. Knowing—as you must know—”
“The manner of man he is, and the manner of the men about him? The danger I’m like to meet? Miss Milne, I’m not afraid. They failed once; do you know that?”
“I know—yes, I know. They failed once; they’ll not fail again”—suddenly leaning forward clasping her hands, peering at me with wild bright eyes, and whispering, “Go! Go now ere it’s too late. Go! and take me with you from this house—this wicked house!”
I was silent, and stared at her, colouring; thinking her surely mad—such the wildness and terror of her look; as realising, she seemed to struggle to control herself; facing me white and quivering, she said at last more calmly, “Mr. Craike, I hear so many secrets in the house. I have lived here so many years—so many lonely years, and am so little accounted, that they do not heed me, or care, if I hear many things that, if they feared me, I would not hear and know. Knowing—I do beseech you, do not stay within the house! Oh, let no thought of loss, if you offend your grandfather, prevail with you! Go!—ere it is too late!”
I said, standing clumsily before her, no longer meeting her look, “Miss Milne, you ask me to assist you. I know—surely by now I know—the house is no house for a maid; I’ll aid you to leave it. Have you no kin or friends out of the house?”
“No kin, no friends. I have lived in this house since I was a little child. No friends within the house; none in all the world.”