'She did. She would, every few minutes, sink into a reverie, and appear to be stone-deaf. But sometimes her face would become suddenly alive with all sorts of shifting expressions. A few days ago she had another fit, exactly like the former one. That was on the day preceding my call at your hotel with your father's books. This time we had much more difficulty in bringing her round. We did so at last; and when she was gone I gave the final touch to my picture of "The Lady Geraldine and Christabel." I was at the moment, however, at work upon "Ruth and Boaz," which I had painted years before—removing the face of Ruth originally there. I worked long at it; and as she was not coming for two days I kept steadily at the picture. This was the day on which I called upon you, wishing you to postpone your visit, lest you should interrupt me while at work upon the head of Ruth, which I was hoping to paint. On Thursday I waited for her at the appointed hour, but she did not come, and I saw her no more.'
V
'Mr. Wilderspin,' I said, as I rose hurriedly, with the intention of going at once in search of Winifred, 'let me see the picture you allude to—"Christabel," and then tell me where to find her.'
'Better not see it!' said Wilderspin solemnly; 'there's something to tell you yet, Mr. Aylwin.'
'Yes, yes; but let me see the picture first. I can bear anything now. Howsoever terrible it may be, I can bear it now; for she's found—she's safe.' And I rushed into the next room, and began turning round in a wild manner one after another some dozens of canvases that were standing on the floor and leaning against the wall.
Half the canvases had been turned, and then I came upon what I sought.
I stood petrified. But I heard Wilderspin's voice at my side say, 'Do not let an imaginary scene distress you, Mr. Aylwin. The picture merely represents the scene in Coleridge's poem where the Lady Christabel, having secretly and in pity brought to her room to share her bed the mysterious lady she had met in the forest at midnight, watches the beautiful witch undress, and is spell-bound and struck dumb by some "sight to dream of, not to tell," which she sees at the lady's bosom.'
* * * * *
Christabel! It was Winifred sitting there upright in bed, confronted by a female figure—a tall lady, who with bowed head was undressing herself beneath a lamp suspended from the ceiling. Christabel! It was Winifred gazing at this figure—gazing as though fascinated; her dark hair falling and tumbling down her neck, till it was at last partly lost between her shining bosom and her nightdress. Yes, and in her blue eyes there was the same concentration of light, there was the same uprolling of the lips, there was the same dreadful gleaming of the teeth, the same swollen veins about the throat that I had seen in Wales. No wonder that at first I could see only the face and figure of Winifred. My consciousness had again dwindled to a single point. In a few seconds, however, I perceived that the scene was an antique oak-panelled chamber, corniced with large and curiously-carven figures, upon which played the warm light from a silver lamp suspended from the middle of the ceiling by a twofold silver chain fastened to the feet of an angel, quaintly carved in the dark wood of the ceiling. It was beneath this lamp that stood the majestic figure of the beautiful stranger, the Lady Geraldine. As she bent her head to look at her bosom, which she was about fully to uncover, the lamp-light gleaming among the gems and flashing in her hair and down her loosened white silken robe to her naked feet, shining, blue-veined and half-hidden in the green rushes that covered the floor, she seemed to be herself the source from which the lurid light was shed about the room. But her eyes were brighter than all. They were more dreadful by far to look at than Winifred's own—they were rolling wildly as if in an agony of hate, while she was drawing in her breath till that marble throat of hers seemed choking. It was not upon her eyes, however, that Winifred's were fixed: it was upon the lady's bosom, for out from beneath the partially-loosened robes that covered that bosom a tiny fork of flame was flickering like a serpent's tongue ruddy from the fires of a cruel and monstrous hate within.
This sight was dreadful enough; but it was not the terror on Winifred's face that now sent me reeling against Sleaford, who with my mother had followed me into the smaller room. Whose figure was that, and whose was the face which at first I had half-recognised in the Lady Geraldine? My mother's!