Part 35 (1/2)

'You've a scent bottle, Mrs. Macnamara--let her smell to it,' said the grim woman in black, coldly, but with a scarcely perceptible gleam of triumph, as she glanced on the horrified faces of the women.

Well, it was a long fainting-fit; but she did come out of it. And when her bewildered gaze at last settled upon Mrs. Matchwell, who was standing darkly and motionless between the windows, she uttered another loud and horrible cry, and clung with her arms round Mrs. Mack's neck, and screamed--

'Oh! Mrs. Mack, _there_ she is--_there_ she is--_there_ she is.'

And she screamed so fearfully and seemed in such an extremity of terror, that Mary Matchwell, in her sables, glided, with a strange sneer on her pale face, out of the room across the hall, and into the little parlour on the other side, like an evil spirit whose mission was half accomplished, and who departed from her for a season.

'She's here--she's here!' screamed poor little Mrs. Nutter.

'No, dear, no--she's not--she's gone, my dear, indeed she's gone,'

replied Mrs. Mack, herself very much appalled.

'Oh! is she gone--is she--_is_ she gone?' cried Mrs. Nutter, staring all round the room, like a child after a frightful dream.

'She's gone, Ma'am, dear--she isn't here--by this cra.s.s, she's gone!'

said Betty, a.s.sisting Mrs. Mack, and equally frightened and incensed.

'Oh! oh! Betty, where is he gone? Oh! Mrs. Mack--oh! no--no--never! It can't be--it couldn't. It _is_ not he--he never did it.'

'I declare to you, Ma'am, she's not right in her head!' cried poor Betty, at her wits' ends.

'There--_there_ now, Sally, darling--_there_,' said frightened Mrs.

Mack, patting her on the back.

'There--there--there--I see him,' she cried again. 'Oh!

Charley,--Charley, sure--sure I didn't see it aright--it was not real.'

'There now, don't be frettin' yourself, Ma'am dear,' said Betty.

But Mrs. Mack glanced over her shoulder in the direction in which Mrs.

Nutter was looking, and with a sort of shock, not knowing whether it was a bodily presence or a simulacrum raised by the incantations of Mary Matchwell, she beheld the dark features and white eye-b.a.l.l.s of Nutter himself looking full on them from the open door.

'Sally--what ails you, sweetheart?' said he, coming close up to her with two swift steps.

'Oh! Charley--'twas a dream--nothing else--a bad dream, Charley. Oh! say it's a dream,' cried the poor terrified little woman. 'Oh! she's coming--she's coming!' she cried again, with an appalling scream.

'_Who_--what's the matter?' cried Nutter, looking in the direction of his poor wife's gaze in black wrath and bewilderment, and beholding the weird woman who had followed him into the room. As he gazed on that pale, wicked face and sable shape, the same sort of spell which she exercised upon Mrs. Mack, and poor Mrs. Nutter, seemed in a few seconds to steal over Nutter himself, and fix him in the place where he stood.

His mahogany face bleached to sickly boxwood, and his eyes looked like pale b.a.l.l.s of stone about to leap from their sockets.

After a few seconds, however, with a sort of gasp, like a man awaking from a frightful sleep, he said--

'Betty, take the mistress to her room;' and to his wife, 'go, sweetheart. Mrs. Macnamara, this must be explained,' he added; and taking her by the hand, he led her in silence to the hall-door, and signed to the driver.

'Oh! thank you, Mr. Nutter,' she stammered; 'but the coach is not mine; it came with that lady who's with Mrs. Nutter.'

He had up to this moved with her like a somnambulist.

'Ay, that lady; and who the devil is she?' and he seized her arm with a sudden grasp that made her wince.