I must be over fatigued
by excitement and sleeplessness. I would go down stairs into the fresh air,
and shake it off.
As I came down the passage, a woman, dressed in black, was standing at the
door, speaking to one of the lodgers. "And he is dead! Oh, if I had but
known sooner that he was even ill!"
That voice--that figure-surely, I knew them!--them, at least, there was
no mistaking! Or, was it another phantom of my disordered brain! I pushed
forward to the door, and as I did so, she turned and our eyes met full. It
was she--Lady Ellerton! sad, worn, transformed by widow's weeds, but that
face was like no other's still. Why did I drop my eyes and draw back at the
first glance like a guilty coward? She beckoned me towards her, went out
into the street, and herself began the conversation, from which I shrank, I
know not why.
"When did he die?"
"Just at sunrise this morning. But how came you here to visit him? Were you
the lady who, as he said, came to him a few days since?"
She did not answer my question. "At sunrise this morning?--A fitting time
for him to die, before he sees the ruin and disgrace of those for whom he
laboured.
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