Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/153

Rh "Yes. madame."

"And—you will think me mad; Heaven knows, I think myself so—I feel as if that person were near me to-night."

The chemist rises, and, going over to her, feels her pulse. It is rapid and intermittent. She is evidently violently agitated, though she is trying with her utmost power to control herself.

"But you say that this person is dead?" he asks.

"Yes; he died some months since."

"You know that there are no such things as ghosts?"

"I am perfectly convinced of that!"

"And yet—?" he asks.

"And yet I feel as though the dead were near me to-night. Tell me—there is no one in this room but ourselves?"

"No one."

"And that door—it leads"

"Into the room in which I sleep."

"And there is no one there?" she asks.

"No one. Let me give you a sedative, madame: you are certainly ill."

"No, no, monsieur; you are very good. I am still weak from the effects of a long illness. That weakness may be the cause of my silly fancies of to-night. To-morrow I leave France, perhaps for ever."

She leaves him; but on the steep dark staircase she pauses for a moment, and seems irresolute, as if half determined to return: then she hurries on, and in a minute is in the street.

She takes a circuitous route towards the house in which she lives. So plainly dressed, and thickly veiled, no one stops to notice her as she walks along.

Her husband, Monsieur Marolles, is engaged at a dinner given by a distinguished member of the chamber of peers. Decidedly he has held winning cards in the game of life. And she, for ever haunted by the past, with weary step goes onward to a dark and unknown future.