CHAPTER IX.
In a very few minutes I was once more in the grounds of that old gable
house; the servant, who went before me, entered them by the stairs and
the wicket-gate of the private entrance; that way was the shortest. So
again I passed by the circling glade and the monastic well,--sward, trees,
and ruins all suffused in the limpid moonlight.
And now I was in the house; the servant took up-stairs the note
with which I was charged, and a minute or two afterwards returned and
conducted me to the corridor above, in which Mrs. Ashleigh received me. I
was the first to speak.
"Your daughter--is--is--not seriously ill, I hope. What is it?"
"Hush!" she said, under her breath. "Will you step this way for
a moment?" She passed through a doorway to the right. I followed her,
and as she placed on the table the light she had been holding, I looked
round with a chill at the heart,--it was the room in which Dr. Lloyd had
died. Impossible to mistake. The furniture indeed was changed, there was
no bed in the chamber; but the shape of the room, the position of the high
casement, which was now wide open, and through which the moonlight
streamed more softly than on that drear winter night, the great square
beams intersecting the low ceiling,--all were impressed vividly on my
memory. The chair to which Mrs. Ashleigh beckoned me was placed just on
the spot where I had stood by the bedhead of the dying man.
I shrank back,--I could not have seated myself there. So I remained
leaning against the chimney-piece, while Mrs. Ashleigh told her story.
She said that on their arrival the day before, Lilian had been in more
than usually good health and spirits, delighted with the old house, the
grounds, and especially the nook by the Monk's Well, at which Mrs.
Ashleigh had left her that evening in order to make some purchases in the
town, in company with Mr. Vigors. When Mrs. Ashleigh returned, she and
Mr. Vigors had sought Lilian in that nook, and Mrs. Ashleigh then
detected, with a mother's eye, some change in Lilian which alarmed her.
She seemed listless and dejected, and was very pale; but she denied that
she felt unwell. On regaining the house she had sat down in the room in
which we then were,--"which," said Mrs. Ashleigh, "as it is not required
for a sleeping-room, my daughter, who is fond of reading, wished to fit up
as her own morning-room, or study. I left her here and went into the
drawing-room below with Mr. Vigors. When he quitted me, which he did very
soon, I remained for nearly an hour giving directions about the placing of
furniture, which had just arrived, from our late residence. I then went
up-stairs to join my daughter, and to my terror found her apparently
lifeless in her chair. She had fainted away."
I interrupted Mrs. Ashleigh here. "Has Miss Ashleigh been subject
to fainting fits?"
"No, never. When she recovered she seemed bewildered, disinclined
to speak. I got her to bed, and as she then fell quietly to sleep, my
mind was relieved. I thought it only a passing effect of excitement, in a
change of abode; or caused by something like malaria in the atmosphere of
that part of the grounds in which I had found her seated."
"Very likely. The hour of sunset at this time of year is trying to
delicate constitutions. Go on."
"About three quarters of an hour ago she woke up with a loud cry, and
has been ever since in a state of great agitation, weeping violently, and
answering none of my questions. Yet she does not seem light-headed,
but rather what we call hysterical."
"You will permit me now to see her. Take comfort; in all you tell me I
see nothing to warrant serious alarm."
