Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/119

Rh did, though not at all in the spirit I should have preferred, nor with the intentions I desired.

“There’s a second Bluebeard’s chamber upstairs. I may have better luck with that; perhaps it’s not guarded with sheet iron. Uncle Benjamin must have spent a fortune at the ironmonger’s if it is, which fortune should have been mine. We’ll go and see.”

I endeavoured to expostulate.

“Pollie, let’s leave it till to-morrow. What’s the use of making any more fuss to-night. I’m dying for want of sleep.”

“Are you?” She looked at me with what struck me as being suspicious eyes; though what there was to be suspicious about is more than I can pretend to say. “But don’t you see, my dear, that if you were to have that sleep for which you’re dying, before you wake from it you may be dead. That second Bluebeard’s chamber is next our bedroom. Suppose someone were to come out of it, while we were sunk in innocent repose, and” She drew her thumb across her throat with a gesture which made me shudder. “That wouldn’t be nice, you know.”

“Pollie, if you keep on talking like that I’ll walk straight out of the house, I don’t care what time of the night it is, and whether you’ll come with me or whether you won’t.”

“I shouldn’t if I were you. It would seem so irregular for a young lady to be taking her solitary walks abroad during the small hours, don’t you know. Now up you go—up those stairs. We’ll continue this conversation at the top. You vowed to be my companion to the death, and my companion to the death you’re going to be.”

I had never done anything of the kind, as she was perfectly well aware. But she did not give me a chance to contradict her. She bundled me up the staircase as if I were a child, with such impetuosity that I was breathless when we reached the landing.