“Have you any other question to ask me?” was all I said.
“One more,” she answered. “Was there anything unusual in the dress of your companion?”
“Yes. She wore a long black veil, which hung over her head and face, and dropped to below her waist.”
Mrs. Van Brandt leaned back in her chair, and covered her eyes with her hands.
“I understand your motive for concealing from me the presence of that miserable woman in the house,” she said. “It is good and kind, like all your motives; but it is useless. While I lay in the trance I saw everything exactly as it was in the reality; and I, too, saw that frightful face!”
Those words literally electrified me.
My conversation of that morning with my mother instantly recurred to my memory. I started to my feet.
“Good God!” I exclaimed, “what do you mean?”
“Don’t you understand yet?” she asked in amazement on her side. “Must I speak more plainly still? When you saw the apparition of me, did you see me write?”
“Yes. On a letter that the lady was writing for me. I saw the words afterward; the words that brought me to you last night: ‘At the month’s end, In the shadow of Saint Paul’s.’”