The letters were blurred before her eyes. Surely this must be hallucination. She staggered as she read, and the quiet nurse came at once to her aid, guiding her to the bed, where she lay quivering.
The nurse gave one look at her, and went out to summon the Doctor, after seeing that she could be left safely.
Then all Winnie’s faculties came back, and she was the fierce Mother fighting for her offspring in some primeval forest.
She half rose, determined to destroy the document before it could be seen by other eyes. That must be done at all costs, but great waves of pain came over her. She tried to rise, but could not. Then as a cold numbness gripped her, she grasped the packet in a despairing effort to throw it into the brightly burning fire.
Delirium was coming on, and in the corner of the room a formless shape was gathering, from the sea-mist which pervaded the house. To her startled imagination a dreadful shape emerged, and the dead form of Hugh stood before her, the face stern and grim, and the dead eyes gazing at her in a fixed stare. Though no sound came from the closed blue lids, she heard him say “Destroy that paper, and the Curse will light on you. I will give you no peace, nor your unborn son. In sorrow and shame you shall bring forth a nameless thing to bear my name and title.”
With a wild shriek, she sank back fainting on the bed, as the nurse hurried into the room.
That night, the eighth Lord Reckavile was born, with the mocking voice of the storm fiends wailing round the old castle, and the very foundations shaking with the fury of the tempest, while in the Bay, gallant men were bringing half drowned Frenchmen safe ashore from the wreck of the vessel, and below a still form was lying with a smile of devilish satisfaction on the dead lips.
When Winnie, like a pallid ghost crept downstairs for the first time, the nurse shook her head.
“She must have loved him very much to take on so,” she said to the housekeeper.
But Winnie had one purpose in view. At all costs the damning papers must be hidden, destroy them she could not after the horrible vision, even though her reason told her it was a nightmare born of her condition. Hugh had told her of the secret drawer of the Reckaviles, and she placed the documents there.