Here Mrs. Le Noir paused in thought for a few moments and then resumed.
"It is the memory of a long, dreary and hopeless imprisonment, my
recollection of my residence in that house! In the same manner in which
I gained all my information, I learned that it was reported in the
neighborhood that I had gone mad with grief for the loss of my husband
and that I was an inmate of a madhouse in the North! It was altogether
false; I never left the Hidden House in all those years until about two
years ago. My life there was dreary beyond all conception. I was
forbidden to go out or to appear at a window. I had the whole attic,
containing some eight or ten rooms, to rove over, but I was forbidden
to descend. An ill-looking woman called Dorcas Knight, between whom and
the elder Le Noir there seemed to have been some sinful bond was
engaged ostensibly as my attendant, but really as my jailer.
Nevertheless, when the sense of confinement grew intolerable I
sometimes eluded her vigilance and wandered about the house at night."
"Thence, no doubt," said Traverse, "giving rise to the report that the
house was haunted."
Mrs. Le Noir smiled, saying: "I believe the Le Noirs secretly encouraged that report. I'll tell you
why. They gave me a chamber lamp inclosed in an intense blue shade,
that cast a strange, unearthly light around. Their ostensible reason
was to insure my safety from fire. Their real reason was that this
light might be seen from without in what was reputed to be an
uninhabited portion of the house, and give color to its bad reputation
among the ignorant of being haunted."
"So much for the origin of one authenticated ghost story," said
Traverse.
"Yes, and there was still more circumstantial evidence to support this
ghostly reputation of the house. As the years passed I had, even in my
confined state, gathered knowledge in one way and another--picking up
stray books and hearing stray conversation; and so, in the end I
learned how gross a deception and how great a wrong had been practised
upon me. I was not wise or cunning. I betrayed constantly to my
attendant my knowledge of these things. In consequence of which my
confinement became still more restricted."
"Yes, they were afraid of you, and fear is always the mother of
cruelty," said Traverse.
"Well, from the time that I became enlightened as to my real position,
all my faculties were upon the alert to find means of escaping and
making my condition known to the authorities. One night they had a
guest, Colonel Eglen, of the army, Old Dorcas had her hands full, and
forgot her prisoner. My door was left unlocked. So, long after Colonel
Eglen had retired to rest, and when all the household were buried in
repose, I left my attic and crept down to the chamber of the guest,
with no other purpose than to make known my wrongs and appeal to his
compassion. I entered his chamber, approached his bed to speak to him,
when this hero of a hundred fields started up in a panic, and at the
sight of the pale woman who drew his curtains in the dead of the night,
he shrieked, violently rang his bell and fainted prone away."