Gertrude had gone to bed, having been up almost all night, and Halsey
was absent on one of those mysterious absences of his that grew more
and more frequent as time went on, until it culminated in the event of
the night of June the tenth. Liddy was in attendance in the sick-room.
There being little or nothing to do, she seemed to spend her time
smoothing the wrinkles from the counterpane. Louise lay under a field
of virgin white, folded back at an angle of geometrical exactness, and
necessitating a readjustment every time the sick girl turned.
Liddy heard my approach and came out to meet me. She seemed to be in a
perpetual state of goose-flesh, and she had got in the habit of looking
past me when she talked, as if she saw things. It had the effect of
making me look over my shoulder to see what she was staring at, and was
intensely irritating.
"She's awake," Liddy said, looking uneasily down the circular
staircase, which was beside me. "She was talkin' in her sleep
something awful--about dead men and coffins."
"Liddy," I said sternly, "did you breathe a word about everything not
being right here?"
Liddy's gaze had wandered to the door of the chute, now bolted securely.
"Not a word," she said, "beyond asking her a question or two, which
there was no harm in. She says there never was a ghost known here."
I glared at her, speechless, and closing the door into Louise's
boudoir, to Liddy's great disappointment, I went on to the bedroom
beyond.
Whatever Paul Armstrong had been, he had been lavish with his
stepdaughter. Gertrude's rooms at home were always beautiful
apartments, but the three rooms in the east wing at Sunnyside, set
apart for the daughter of the house, were much more splendid.
From the walls to the rugs on the floor, from the furniture to the
appointments of the bath, with its pool sunk in the floor instead of
the customary unlovely tub, everything was luxurious. In the bedroom
Louise was watching for me. It was easy to see that she was much
improved; the flush was going, and the peculiar gasping breathing of
the night before was now a comfortable and easy respiration.
She held out her hand and I took it between both of mine.
"What can I say to you, Miss Innes?" she said slowly. "To have come
like this--"
I thought she was going to break down, but she did not.
"You are not to think of anything but of getting well," I said, patting
her hand. "When you are better, I am going to scold you for not coming
here at once. This is your home, my dear, and of all people in the
world, Halsey's old aunt ought to make you welcome."