It must have lasted long, for when I wakened my candle had burnt out; my father, having quite forgotten me, was gone, and the room was dark and deserted. I felt cold and a little stiff, and for some seconds did not know where I was.
I had been wakened, I suppose, by a sound which I now distinctly heard, to my great terror, approaching. There was a rustling; there was a breathing. I heard a creaking upon the plank that always creaked when walked upon in the passage. I held my breath and listened, and coiled myself up in the innermost recess of my little chamber.
Sudden and sharp, a light shone in from the nearly-closed study door. It shone angularly on the ceiling like a letter L reversed. There was a pause. Then some one knocked softly at the door, which after another pause was slowly pushed open. I expected, I think, to see the dreaded figure of the linkman. I was scarcely less frightened to see that of Madame de la Rougierre. She was dressed in a sort of grey silk, which she called her Chinese silk — precisely as she had been in the daytime. In fact, I do not think she had undressed. She had no shoes on. Otherise her toilet was deficient in nothing. Her wide mouth was grimly closed, and she stood scowling into the room with a searching and pallid scrutiny, the candle held high above her head at the full stretch of her arm.
Placed as I was in a deep recess, and in a seat hardly raised above the level of the floor, I escaped her, although it seemed to me for some seconds, as I gazed on this thin spectre, that our eyes actually met.
I sat without breathing or winking, staring upon the formidable image which with upstretched arm, and the sharp lights and hard shadows thrown upon her corrugated features, looked like a sorceress watching for the effect of a spell.
She was plainly listening intensely. Unconsciously she had drawn her lower lip altogether between her teeth, and I well remember what a deathlike and idiotic look the contortion gave her. My terror lest she should discover me amounted to positive agony. She rolled her eyes stealthily from corner to corner of the room, and listened with her neck awry at the door.
Then to my father’s desk she went. To my great relief, her back was towards me. She stooped over it, with the candle close by; I saw her try a key — it could be nothing else — and I heard her blow through the wards to clear them.
Then, again, she listened at the door, candle in hand, and then with long tiptoe steps came back, and papa’s desk in another moment was open, and Madame cautiously turning over the papers it contained.
Twice or thrice she paused, glided to the door, and listened again intently with her head near the ground, and then returned and continued her search, peeping into papers one after another, tolerably methodically, and reading some quite through.
While this felonious business was going on, I was freezing with fear lest she should accidentally look round and her eyes light on me; for I could not say what she might not do rather than have her crime discovered.
Sometimes she would read a paper twice over; sometimes a whisper no louder than the ticking of a watch, sometimes a brief chuckle under her breath, bespoke the interest with which here and there a letter or a memorandum was read.
For about half an hour, I think, this went on; but at the time it seemed to me all but interminable. On a sudden she raised her head and listened for a moment, replaced the papers deftly, closed the desk without noise, except for the tiny click of the lock, extinguished the candle, and rustled stealthily out of the room, leaving in the darkness the malign and hag-like face on which the candle had just shone still floating filmy in the dark.
Why did I remain silent and motionless while such an outrage was being committed? If, instead of being a very nervous girl, preoccupied with an undefinable terror of that wicked woman, I had possessed courage and presence of mind, I dare say I might have given an alarm, and escaped from the room without the slightest risk. But so it was; I could no more stir than the bird who, cowering under its ivy, sees the white owl sailing back and forward under its predatory cruise.
Not only during her presence, but for more than an hour after, I remained cowering in my hiding-place, and afraid to stir, lest she might either be lurking in the neighborhood, or return and surprise me.
You will not be astonished, that after a night so passed I was ill and feverish in the morning. To my horror, Madame de la Rougierre came to visit me at my bedside. Not a trace of guilty consciousness of what had passed ruing the night was legible in her face. She had no sign of late watching, and her toilet was exemplary.
As she sat smiling by me, full of anxious and affectionate enquiry, and smoothed the coverlet with her great felonious hand, I could quite comprehend the dreadful feeling with which the deceived husband in the “Arabian Nights” met his ghoul wife, after his nocturnal discovery.
Ill as I was, I got up and found my father in that room which adjoined his bedchamber. He perceived, I am sure, by my looks, that something unusual had happened. I shut the door, and came close beside his chair.
“Oh, papa, I have such a thing to tell you!” I forgot to call him “Sir.” “A secret; and you won’t say who told you? Will you come down to the study?”
He looked hard at me, got up, and kissing my forehead, said —“Don’t be frightened, Maud; I venture to say it is a mare’s nest; at all events, my child, we will take care that no danger reaches you; come, child.”
And by the hand he led me to the study. When the door was shut, and we had reached the far end of the room next the window, I said, but in a low tone, and holding his arm fast —
“Oh, sir, you don’t know what a dreadful person we have living with us — Madame de la Rougierre, I mean. Don’t let her in if she comes; she would guess what I am telling you, and one way or another I am sure she would kill me.”
“Tut, tut, child. You must know that’s nonsense,” he said, looking pale and stern.
“Oh no, papa. I am horribly frightened, and Lady Knollys thinks so too.”
“Ha! I dare say; one fool makes many. We all know what Monica thinks.”
“But I saw it, papa. She stole your key last night, and opened your desk, and read all the papers.”
“Stole my key!” said my father, staring at me perplexed, but at the same instant producing it. “Stole it! Why here it is!”
“She unlocked your desk; she read your papers for ever so long. Open it now, and see whether they have not been stirred.”
He looked at me this time in silence, with a puzzled air; but he did unlock the desk, and lifted the papers curiously and suspiciously. As he did so he uttered a few of those inarticulate interjections which are made with closed lips, and not always intelligible; but he made no remark.
Then he placed me on a chair beside him, and sitting down himself, told me to recollect myself, and tell him distinctly all I had seen. This accordingly I did, he listening with deep attention.
“Did she remove any paper?” asked my father, at the same time making a little search, I suppose, for that which he fancied might have been stolen.
“No; I did not see her take anything.”
“Well, you are a good girl, Maud. Act discreetly. Say nothing to anyone — not even to your cousin Monica.”
Directions which, coming from another person would have had no great weight, were spoken by my father with an earnest look and a weight of emphasis that made them irresistibly impressive, and I went away with the seal of silence upon my lips.
“Sit down, Maud, there. You have not been very happy with Madame de la Rougierre. It is time you were relieved. This occurrence decides it.”
He rang the bell.
“Tell Madame de la Rougierre that I request the honour of seeing her for a few minutes here.”
My father’s communications to her were always equally ceremonious. In a few minutes there was a knock at the door, and the same figure,