Vintage Vampire Stories (18 page)

“Lady, let me beg of you to tell me what troubles you! Come into my room and rest and warm yourself. Believe me, there is nothing I would not gladly do to be of service to you. You have only to command me; I am an Englishman, a gentleman, a soldier—so you may trust me. Let me help you, lady: come, I beg of you.” Then, after a pause, as the mourner neither spoke nor moved, Hippy bowed, and, motioning her to follow him, walked slowly into his room, turning every now and then and repeating his gesture of invitation;—she the while remaining upon her knees,—looking after him, indeed, but making no attempt to rise or follow.

Although Adams had at no time lost sight of his master, whose back, as he seemed to be engaged in conversation with some invisible person far down the corridor, had always been within the range of the faithful servant's vision, still it was with a feeling of great relief that he now saw the Colonel come back into the room unharmed, although the expression of tenderness and pity in his master's face rather puzzled the man, as did also the Colonel's conduct in turning when he had reached the fireplace and looking anxiously back towards the door which had left open behind him, as if expecting and indeed longing for the arrival of some visitor. At length, after the lapse of a few minutes—a delay which, though brief, the servant could plainly see his master bore impatiently, the longed-for visitor slowly emerged from the darkness of the corridor until she stood framed in the doorway, against one side of which, as if to support herself, she lightly placed a small white hand. It was thus Adams saw the slender black-robed figure of a sweet girl mourner appear, and the first time in his life was astonished, nay, astounded rather, at the marvellous resemblance in depth of tenderness, in purity of sorrow-hallowed loveliness, between this nocturnal lady visitor to his master and a Madonna from a canvas, say, of Raphael, standing apparently before him clothed in flesh.

Perhaps some such fantastic idea of an incarnation of one of Raphael's HolyVirgins occurred to Rowan as he bowed low and advanced to welcome his fair visitor, for this time he addressed her in Italian, thanking her for the great honour she was doing him, making all kinds of graceful and very Italian protestations of sympathy and respect, and concluding a very pretty speech by begging her not to stay there on the threshold, but to come in and seat herself by the fire; adding that if his presence were in any way distasteful to her he would at once withdraw and leave her in undisturbed possession of the room. But this attempt, clothed in the choicest Tuscan, to inspire confidence, met with no greater measure of success than had attended its Rumanian and German predecessors. The sweetly sorrowful lady stood on the threshold in the same timid attitude, staring at the Colonel with no abatement in the tender melancholy of her face, but apparently in no wise understanding his words, and even, indeed, ignoring his gesture inviting her to enter and be seated.

What was to be done? He could hardly, of course, take this lovely girl-Madonna in his arms and drag her into his room by force; and yet it seemed intolerably absurd, and indeed impossible, to leave her standing there in the doorway. Why had she come even to the threshold of his door, if she had not intended coming farther in the event of her seeing nothing to alarm her? Of course, and beyond all doubt, if he could only make her understand his sympathy and respect, and that she need have no fear of him, and would come in and perhaps tell him the cause of her distress, and let him help her; and on the other hand, knowing so many languages and even dialects and patois as he did, it seemed almost impossible that he should not be able at length to hit upon some form of speech by which he could convey to his most perfect incarnate type of spiritual purity and loveliness the expression of his devoted homage.

So he started off on a wild polyglottic steeplechase, making protestations of respect and sympathy and offers of aid and friendship in e very language and dialect he could remember, from his native English to the patois spoken by the Jews in White Russia. But all to no purpose; and at length he was constrained to pause and acknowledge that he was utterly defeated.

“You're very beautiful,” said he at last, with a sigh, speaking in his native English, the inability of his fair auditor to understand him possessing at least the meager and thankless advantage of allowing him to express his admiration in words no matter how impassioned, provided, of course, he took care his face should not betray the significance and ardour of his speech—“the most beautiful woman I think I ever saw; but you're a beautiful riddle, and I don't know how to read you.What language can you speak, I wonder? Only the language of love, perhaps! Were I to kneel down there before you, or take you in my arms and kiss you, in what language would you repulse me, or—?”

Here he paused, greatly surprised: were his eyes deceiving him, or was at length a change stealing over the Madonna face, and the timidity and sadness in it slowly giving place to an expression of some brighter sentiment? That she could not understand the language he was speaking he felt sure, for he had already addressed her in it, and his words had evidently failed utterly to convey any meaning to her mind. But surely there was a difference now, and something he had said, or some gesture he had made, or some expression in his face, had been pleading to her, for the great shadow of melancholy was slowly passing from her. But between the language, the English he had used before and that which he had just spoken, what difference was there? None, of course, save in the sense: then the words had been of respect and sympathy, now of love and tenderness. Could it be that by some marvelous intuition her woman's instinct had at once divined the more tender words? Or indeed was it not possible, nay, likely, that in speaking them he had involuntarily let their meaning be reflected in his eyes, and that she had read it there?

But then such tenderness and affection were not displeasing to her; and this Mask of the Madonna, this ideal type of womanly purity, could be lighted by the joy of love.

The thought set Rowan's blood coursing through his veins like fire, and made his heart beat as if he had been but twenty. He must see, and at once: he would speak to her again in words of affection, and let his eyes partly and by degrees interpret what he said, carefully of course, and always guided by what he should see her eyes reply to his, lest he should offend her. And so he began telling this lovely woman in very low, quiet and grave tones, but in his words of great tenderness, how fair he found her, and as he spoke his eyes expressed the meaning of his words more and more clearly and ardently as he recognized with ever-growing delight that the Madonna face was being gradually illuminated and transfigured by joy, as word after word of ever-increasing passion, echoed in tender glances from his eyes, fell from his lips.

And as he spoke he did not advance towards her, but only clasped his hands and stood still far from her, looking at her in the doorway; while she, more and more visibly affected by his ever-growing emotion, first withdrew her hand from the side of the door where she had leant it, and pushed back the cowl from her face a little, still further disclosing, by so doing, the wavy wealth of soft brown curls, and then, as the violet eyes became by degrees lighted with great joy and the sweet lips melted to a smile of ineffable rapture, clasped both hands together just beneath her cheek in an attitude of girlish and innocent delight.

So she stood until the fervour of Rowan's words and voice and eyes rose to an ecstasy of passion, and then leaning forward her head, not indeed to hide the sweet blushes which were rising to her cheeks, but as a child eager to rush to a beloved embrace, and her eyes answering the ardour she read in those she gazed into, she half stretched forth her arms and if her longing to twine him in a caress were but restrained by maiden bashfulness. Rowan saw the gesture, stepped forward, opened wide his arms, and the girl Madonna rushed to his embrace, nestling her blushing face upon his neck, as in rapture of fondness he clasped her to his bosom.

At the same moment a terrible cry rang through the room and through the house, waking the tsiganes, who sprang from their beds in mad terror, and startling the stupid Moldavians, who, despairing of really frightening Rowan, had decided on merely making him look like a fool, and were at that very moment creeping up the staircase, dressed in absurd costumes and armed with monster squirts and all kinds of grotesque instruments—the cry of a strong man in an agony of terror. The horrified Adams saw his master hurl the woman from him with great violence, snatch his revolver from his pocket, discharge three chambers of it at her in quick succession, and then reel and fall forward on his face, while she, rising from the floor apparently unhurt, glided from the apartment by the still open door. When Adams reached his master's side he found him quite dead, the body presenting two most remarkable peculiarities: first a very strong odour of musk—and secondly, on the neck three small wounds shaped like three X's joined together. The medical man, a German, who was immediately called in, ascribed the death of Colonel Rowan to aneurism of the heart, and declined to attach the least importance to the three small wounds or bites on the neck, the post-mortem examination proving that so far as the cause of death was concerned the physician was right in his conjecture.

As for the strange lady with Madonna face, Adams was far too shrewd of a man of the world to make know the extraordinary circumstance to every one. He told Tony Jeratczesco, and inquiries were made; but no such person had been seen or heard of, and so the matter dropped; and it is only within the last few months that Mr. Adams, now retired from his delicate and difficult profession of valet and living in the neighbourhood of Newmarket, could be prevailed upon to give a detailed account of all the strange facts connected with the death of his master, show Hippy Rowan's diary, and complete his story by producing a photograph which he himself had taken of the dead man's neck, on which is plainly visible the imprint of the Kiss of Judas.

“
A
nd you intend to keep the Orange Grove for your own occupation, Madam,” interrogates the lawyer gravely, with his downward-looking eyes completely hidden under bushy brows.

“Decidedly,” answered my friend. “Why, the Orange Grove is the very best part of my fortune. It seems almost a special Providence, don't you know, Helen,” pursued Lota, turning to me, “that my dear old grandfather should have made himself a winter home in the south. There are the doctors always teasing me about my weak chest, and there is a lonely house and gardens and orange groves waiting for me in a climate invented on purpose for weak chests. I shall live there every winter of my life, Mr. Dean.”

The eminently respectable solicitor allowed a lapse of silence before he replied.

“It is not a lucky house, Miss Hammond.”

“How not lucky?”

“Your grandfather only lived to spend one winter in it. He was in very good health when he went there in December—a strong, sturdy old man—and when he sent for me in February to prepare the will which made you his sole heiress, I was shocked at the change in him—broken—wasted—nerves shattered—a mere wreck.

“That was very sad; but surely you would not blame a lovely villa in Italy,” smiling down at a photograph in her lap, the picture of the typical southern villa, French windows, verandah, balconies, tower, terraces, garden, and fountain, “for the sudden break-up of an elderly constitution. I have heard that old men of very active habits and a hardy way of living, like my dear old grandfather, are apt to grow old suddenly.”

“It was not merely that he was aged—he was mentally changed—nervous, restless, to all appearance unhappy.”

“Well, didn't you ask him why?” demanded Lota, whose impetuous temper was beginning to revolt against the lawyer's solemnity.

“My position hardly warranted my questioning Mr. Hammond on a matter so purely personal. I saw the change, and regretted it. Six weeks later he was gone.”

Poor old gran'pa. We were such friend when I was a little thing. And then they sent me to Germany with a governess—poor little motherless mite—and then they packed me off to Pekin where father was Consul and there he died, and then they sent me home again—and I was taken up by the smartest of all my aunts, and had my little plunge in society, and always exceeded my allowance; was up to my eyes in debt—for a girl. I suppose a man would hardly count such bills as I used to owe. And then gran'pa took it into his head to be pleased with me; and here I am—residuary legatee. I think that's what you call me?” with an interrogative glance at the lawyer, who nodded a grave assent, “and I am going to spend the winter months in my villa near Taggia. Only think of that, Helen, Taggia—Tag-gi-a!”

She syllabled the word slowly, ending with a little smack of her pretty lips as if it were something nice to eat, and she looked at me for sympathy.

“I haven't the faintest idea what you mean by Tag-gi-a,” said I. “It sounds like an African word.”

“Surely you have read Dr.Antonio.”

“Surely I have not.”

“Then I have done with you. There is a gulf between us. All that I know of the Liguria comes out of that delightful book. It taught me to pine for the shores for the Mediterranean when I was quite a little thing. And they show you Dr. Ruffini's house at Taggia. His actual house, where he actually lived.”

“You ought to consider, Miss Hammond, that the Riviera has changed a good deal since Ruffini's time,” said the lawyer. “Not that I have anything to say against the Riviera per se. All I would advise is that should winter in a more convenient locality than a romantic gorge between San Remo and Alassio. I would suggest Nice, for instance.”

“Nice.Why, someone was saying only the other day that Nice is the chosen rendezvous of all the worst characters in Europe and America.”

“Perhaps that's what makes it such an agreeable place,” said the lawyer. “There are circles and circles in Nice.You need never breathe the same atmosphere as the bad characters.

“A huge towny place,” exclaimed Lota. “Gran'pa said it was not better than Brighton.”

“Could anything be better than Brighton?” asked I.

“Helen, you were always a Philistine. It was because of the horridness of Nice and Cannes that gran'pa bought a villa—four times too big for him—in this romantic spot.”

She kissed the white house in the photograph. She gloated over the wildness of the landscape, in which the villa stood out, solitary, majestic. Palms, olives, cypress—a deep gorge cutting through the heart of the picture—mountains romantically remote—one white crest in the furthest distance—a foreground of tumbled crags and threads of running water.

“Is it really real?” she asked suddenly, “not a photographer's painted background? They have such odious tricks, those photographers. One sits for one's picture in a tidy South Kensington studio, and they send one home smirking out of a primeval forest, or in front of a stormy ocean. Is it real?

“Absolutely real.”

“Very well, Mr. Dean. Then I am going to establish myself there in the first week of December, and if you want to be very careful of me for gran'pa's sake all you have to do is to find me a thoroughly respectable major-domo, who won't drink my wine or run away with my plate. My aunt will engage the rest of my people.”

“My dear young lady, you may command any poor services of mine; but really now, is it not sheer perversity to choose a rambling house in a wild part of the country where your ample means would allow you to hire the prettiest bijou-villa on the Riviera?”

“I hate bijou houses, always too small for anybody except some sour old maid who wants to over-hear all her servants say about her. The spacious rambling house—the wild solitary landscape—those are what I want, Mr. Dean. Get me a butler who won't cut my throat, and I ask no more.”

“Then madam, I have done. A willful woman must have her way, even when it is a foolish way.”

“Everything in life is foolish,” Lota answered, lightly. “The people who live haphazard come out just as well at the end as your ineffable wiseacres. And now that you know I am fixed as fate, that nothing you can say will unbend my iron will, do, like a darling old family lawyer whom I have known ever since I began to know one face from another, do tell me why you object to the Orange Grove. Is it the drainage?”

“There is no drainage.”

“Then that's all right,” checking it off on her forefinger. “Is it the neighbours?”

“Need I say there are no neighbours?”

“Number two satisfactory.”

“Is it the atmosphere? Low the villa is not; damp it can hardly be, perched on the side of a hill.”

“I believe the back rooms are damp. The hill side comes too near the windows. The back rooms are decidedly gloomy, and I believe damp.”

“And how many rooms are there in all?”

“Nearer thirty than twenty. I repeat it is a great rambling house, ever so much too large for you or any sensible young lady.”

“For the sensible young lady, no doubt,” said Lota, nodding impertinently at me. “She likes a first floor in Regency Square, Brighton, with a little room under the tiles for her maid. I am not sensible, and I like lots of rooms; rooms to roam about in, to furnish and unfurnish, and arrange and rearrange; rooms to see ghosts in. And now, dearest Mr. Dean, I am going to pluck out the heart of your mystery.What kind of ghost is it that haunts the Orange Grove? I know there is a ghost.”

“Who told you so?”

“You. You have been telling me so for the last half-hour. It is because of the ghost you don't want me to go to the Orange Grove.You might just as well be candid and tell me the whole story. I am not afraid of ghosts. In fact, I rather like the idea of having a ghost on my property. Wouldn't you Helen, if you had property?”

“No,” I answered, decisively. “I hate ghosts. They are always associated with damp houses and bad drainage. I don't believe you would find a ghost in Brighton, not even if you advertised for one.”

“Tell me all about the ghost,” urged Lota.

“There is nothing to tell. Neither the people in the neighbourhood nor the servants of the house went so far as to say the Orange Grove was haunted. The utmost assertion was that time out of mind the master or the mistress of that house had been miserable.”

“Time out of mind. Why, I thought gran'pa built the house twenty years ago.”

“He only added the front which you see in the photograph. The back part of the house, the larger part, is three hundred years old. The place was a monkish hospital, the infirmary belonging to a Benedictine monastery in the neighbourhood, and to which the sick from other Benedictine houses were sent.”

“Oh, that was ages ago and ages ago. You don't suppose that the ghosts of all the sick monks, who were so inconsiderate as to die in my house, haunt the rooms at the back?”

“I say again, Miss Hammond, nobody has ever to my knowledge asserted that the house was haunted.”

“Then it can't be haunted. If it were the servants would have seen something. They are champion ghost-seers.”

“I am not a believer in ghosts, Miss Hammond,” said the friendly old lawyer; “but I own to a grain of superstition on one point. I can't help thinking there is such a thing as ‘luck.' I have seen such marked distinctions between the lucky and unlucky people I have met in my professional career. Now, the Orange Grove has been an unlucky house for the last hundred years. It's bad luck is as old as its history. And why, in the name of all that's reasonable, should a beautiful young lady with all the world to choose from insist upon living at the Orange Grove?”

“First, because it is my own house; next, because I hardly conceived a passion for it the moment I saw this photograph; and thirdly, perhaps because your opposition has given a zest to the whole thing. I shall establish myself there next December, and you must come out to me after Christmas, Helen.Your beloved Brighton is odious in February and March.”

“Brighton is always delightful,” answered I, “but of course I shall be charmed to go to you.”

I was Lota's dearest friend, and she was mine. I had never seen anyone quite so pretty, or quite so fascinating then: I have never seen anyone as pretty or as fascinating since. She was no Helen, no Cleopatra, no superbly modelled specimen of typical loveliness. She was only herself. Like no one else, and to my mind better than everybody else—a delicately-wrought ethereal creature, all spirit and fire and impulse and affection, flinging herself with ardour into every pursuit, living intensely in the present, curiously reckless of the future, curiously forgetful of the past.

When I parted with her at Charing Cross Station on the first of December it was understood that I was to join her about the middle of January. One of my uncles was going to Italy at that time, and was to escort me to Taggia, where I was to be met by my hostess. I was surprised, therefore, when a telegram arrived before Christmas, entreating me to go to her at once.

I telegraphed back: “Are you ill?”

Answer: “Not ill; but I want you.”

My reply: “Impossible. Will go as arranged.”

I would have given much, as I told Lota in the letter that followed my last message, to have done what she wished; but family claims were too strong. A brother was to marry at the beginning of the year, and I should have been thought heartless had I shirked the ceremony. And there was the old idea of Christmas as a time for family gatherings. Had she been ill, or unhappy, I would have cancelled every other claim, and gone to her without one hour's delay, I told her; but I knew her a creature of caprices, and this was doubtless only one caprice among many.

I knew that she was well cared for. She had a maiden aunt with her, the mildest and sweetest of spinsters, who absolutely adored her. She had her old nurse and slave, a West Indian half-caste, who had accompanied her from Pekin, and she had—

“Another, and a dearer one still.”

Captain Holbrook, of the Stonyshere Regiment, was at San Remo. I had seen his name in a travelling note in the
World
, and I smiled as I read the announcement, and thought how few of his acquaintance would know as well as I knew the magnet which attracted him to quit San Remo rather than to Monte Carlo or Nice. I knew that he loved Violetta Hammond devotedly, and that she had played fast and loose with him, amused at his worship, accepting all his attentions in her light happy manner, and giving no heed to the future.

Yes, my pretty, insouciante Lota was well cared for, ringed round with exceeding love, guarded as faithfully as a god in an Indian temple. I had no uneasiness about her, and I alighted in a very happy frame of mind at the quiet little station at Taggia, beside the tideless sea, in dusk of a January evening.

Lota was on the platform to welcome me, with Miss Elderson, her maternal aunt, in attendance upon her, the younger lady muffled in sealskin from head to foot.

“Why Lota,” said I, when we had kissed, and laughed a little with eyes full of tears, “you are wrapped up as if this were Russia, and to me the air feels balmier than an English April.”

“Oh, when one has a hundred guinea coat one may as well wear it,” she answered carelessly. “I bought this sealskin among my mourning.”

“Lota is chillier than she used to be,” said Miss Elderson, in her plaintive voice.

There was a landau with a pair of fine strong horses waiting to carry us up to the villa. The road wound gently upward, past orange and lemon groves, and silvery streamlets, and hanging woods, where velvet dark cypresses rose tower-like amidst the silvery grey of the olives, and so to about midway between the valley, where Taggia's antique palaces and church towers gleamed pale in the dusk, and the crest of the hill along which straggled the white houses of a village. The after-glow was rosy in the sky when a turn of the road brought our faces towards the summer-like sea, and in that lovely light every line in Lota's face was but too distinctly visible. Too distinctly, for I saw the cruel change which three months had made in her fresh young beauty. She had left me all the bloom of girlhood, gay, careless, brimming over with the joy of life and the new delight of that freedom of choice which wealth gives to a fatherless and motherless girl. To go where she liked, do as she liked, roam the world over, choosing always the companions she loved—that had been Lota's dream of happiness, and if there had been some touch of self-love in her idea of bliss there had been also a generous and affectionate heart, and unfailing kindness to those whom Fate had not used so kindly.

I saw her now a haggard, anxious-looking woman, the signs of worry written too plainly on the wan pinched face, the lovely eyes larger but paler than of old, and the markings of nervous depression visible in the droop of the lips that had once been like Cupid's bow.

I remember Mr. Dean's endeavour to dissuade her from occupying her grandfather's villa on this lovely hill, and I began to detest the Orange Grove before I had seen it. I was prepared to find an abode of gloom—a house where the foul miasma from some neighbouring swamp crept in at every window, and hung grey and chill in every passage; a house whose too obvious unwholesomeness had conjured up images of terror, the spectral forms engendered of slackened nerves, and sleepless nights. I made up my mind that if it were possible for a bold and energetic woman to influence Lota Hammond I would be that woman, and whisk her off to Nice or Monte Carlo before she had time to consider what I was doing.

There would be a capital pretext in the Carnival. I would declare that I had set my heart upon seeing a Carnival at Nice; and once there I would take care she never returned to the place that was killing her. I looked, with a thrill of anger, at the mild sheep-faced aunt. How could she have been so blind as not to perceive the change in her niece? And Captain Holbrook! What a poor creature, to call himself a lover, and let the girl he loved perish before his eyes.

I had time to think while the horses walked slowly up the hillroad, for neither the aunt nor the niece had much to say. Each in her turn pointed out some feature in the view. Lota told me that she adored Taggia, and doted on her villa and garden; and that was the utmost extent of our conversation in the journey of more than an hour.

At last we drove round a sharpish curve, and on the hill-side above us, looking down at us from a marble terrace, I saw the prettiest house I had ever seen in my life; a fairy palace, with lighted windows, shining against a back-ground of wooded hills. I could not see the colours of the flowers in the thickening gloom of night, but I could smell the scent of the roses and the fragrant-leaved geraniums that filled the vases on the terrace.

Within and without all was alike sparkling and lightsome; and so far as I could see on the night of my arrival there was not a corner which could have accommodated a ghost. Lota told me that one of her first improvements had been to install the electric light.

“I love to think that this house is shining like a star when the people of Taggia look across the valley,” she said.

I told her that I had seen Captain Holbrook's name among the visitors at San Remo.

“He is staying at Taggia now,” she said. “He grew tired of San Remo.”

“The desire to be nearer you had nothing to do with the change?”

“You can ask him if you like,” she answered, with something of her old insouciance. “He is coming to dinner to-night.”

“Does he spend his days and nights going up and down the hill?” I asked.

“You will be able to see for yourself as to that. There is not much for anyone to do in Taggia.”

Captain Holbrook found me alone in the salon when he came; for, in spite of the disadvantages of arrival after a long journey, I was dressed before Lota. He was very friendly, and seemed really glad to see me; indeed, he lost no time in saying as much with a plainness of speech which was more friendly than flattering.

“I am heartily glad you have come,” he said, “for now I hope we shall be able to get Miss Hammond away from this depressing hole.”

Remembering that the house was perched upon the shoulders of a romantic hill, with an outlook of surpassing loveliness, and looking round at the brilliant colouring of an Italian drawing-room steeped in soft clear light, and redolent of roses and carnations, it seemed rather hard measure to hear of Lota's inheritance talked of as “a depressing hole”; but the cruel change in Lota herself was enough to justify the most unqualified dislike of the house in which the change had come to pass.

Miss Elderson and her niece appeared before I could reply, and we went to dinner. The dining-room was as bright and gracious of aspect as all the other rooms which I had seen, everything having been altered and improved to suit Lota's somewhat expensive tastes.

“The villa ought to be pretty,” Miss Elderson murmured plaintively, “for Lota's improvements have cost a fortune.”

“Life is so short. We ought to make the best of it,” said Lota gaily.

We were full of gaiety, and there was the sound of talk and light laughter all through the dinner; but I felt that there was a forced note in our mirth, and my own heart was like lead. We all went back to the drawing-room together. The windows were open to the moonlight, and the faint sighing of the night wind among the olive woods. Lota and her lover established themselves in front of the blazing pine logs, and Miss Elderson asked me if I could like a stroll on the terrace. There were fleecy white shawls lying about ready for casual excursions of this kind, and the good old lady wrapped one about my shoulders with motherly care. I followed her promptly, foreseeing that she was anxious to talk confidentially with me as I was to talk with her.

My eagerness anticipated her measured speech. “You are unhappy about Lota,” I asked.

“Very, very unhappy.”

“But why haven't you taken her away from here?You must see that the place is killing her. Or perhaps the dreadful change in her may not strike you, who have been seeing her every day—?”

“It does strike me; the change is too palpable. I see it every morning, see her looking a little worse, a little worse every day, as if some dreadful disease were eating away her life. And yet our good English doctor from San Remo says there is nothing the matter except a slight lung trouble, and that this air is the very finest, the position of this house faultless, for such a case as hers, high enough to be bracing, yet sheltered from all cold winds. He told me that we could take her no better place than Genoa and Marseilles.”

“But is she to stop here, and fade, and die? There is some evil influence in this house. Mr. Dean said as much; something horrible, uncanny, mysterious.”

“My dear, my dear! Ejaculated the amiable invertebrate creature, shaking her head in solemn reproachfullness, “can you, a good Churchwoman, believe in any nonsense of that sort?”

“I don't know what to believe; but I can see that my dearest friend is perishing bodily and mentally.The three months in which we have been parted have done the work of years of declining health. And she was warned against the house; she was warned.”

“There is nothing the matter with the house,” that weakbrained spinster answered pettishly. “The sanitary engineer from Cannes has examined everything. The drainage is simply perfect—”

“And your niece is dying!” I said, savagely, and turned my back upon Miss Elderson.

I gazed across the pale grey woods to the sapphire sea, with eyes that scarcely saw the loveliness they looked upon. My heart was swelling with indignation against this feeble affection which would see the thing it loved vanishing off the earth, and yet could not be moved to energetic action.