IT was fortunate for us all, especially for poor Mary, that, after Robbie's death, Mrs. Brane needed every care and attention that we could give her. For myself, I had expected prompt dismissal, but, as it turned out, Mrs. Brane more than ever insisted upon my staying on as housekeeper. Neither Mary, because of her loyalty to me, nor Paul Dabney, for some less friendly reason, had told the poor little woman of the cause of Robbie's death, nor of their suspicions concerning my complicity, unconscious or otherwise.

It may seem strange to the reader that I should not have left “The Pines.” It seems strange to me now. But there was more than one reason for my courage or my obstinacy. First, I felt that after Dabney's extraordinary treatment of me, treatment which he made no attempt to explain and for which he made no apology, my honor demanded that I should stay in the house and clear up the double mystery of the locked door that opened, and of the strand of red-gold hair that was wrapped around poor little Robbie's fingers. Of course I may have dreamed that the door was locked; I may have, that time when I fancied myself broad awake, been really in a state of trance, and, instead of finding a locked door and going back to bed, I may then have gone through the door and down the hall to Robbie's nursery, coming to myself only, when, being again in bed, I had awakened to the sound of his screams. This explanation, I know, was the one adopted by Mary. Mr. Dabney had other and darker suspicions. I realized that in some mysterious fashion he had constituted himself my judge. I realized, too, by degrees, and here, if you like, was the chief reason for my not leaving “The Pines,” that Paul Dabney simply would not have let me go. Unobtrusively, quietly, more, almost loathfully, he kept me under a strict surveillance. I became conscious of it slowly. If I had to leave the place on an errand he accompanied me or he sent Mary to accompany me. At about this time Mrs. Brane, without asking any advice from me, engaged two outdoor men. They were to tidy up the grounds, she told me, and to do some repairing within and without. They were certainly the most inefficient workmen I have ever seen. They were always pottering about the house or grounds. I grew weary of the very sight of them. It seemed to me that one was always in my sight, whatever I did, wherever I went.

Mrs. Brane felt Robbie's death terribly, of course; she suffered not only from the natural grief of a mother, but from a morbid fancy that, in some way, the tragedy was her own fault. “I should have taken him away. I should not have let him live in this dreary, dreadful house. What was anything worth compared to his dear life! What is anything worth to me now!” There was again the suggestion that living in this house was worth something. I should have discussed all these matters with Mr. Dabney. Indeed, I should have made him my confidant on all these mysteries which confronted me, had it not been for his harshness on that dreadful night. As it was, I could hardly bear to look at him, hardly bear to speak to him. And, yet, poor, wretched, lonely-hearted girl that I was, I loved him more than ever. I kept on with my work of dusting books, and he kept on with his everlasting notes on Russian literature, so we were as much as ever in each other's company. But what a sad change in our intercourse! The shadow of sorrow and discomfort that lay upon “The Pines” lay heaviest of all in that sunny, peaceful bookroom where we had had such happy hours. And I could not help being glad of his presence, and, sometimes, I found his eyes fixed upon me with such a look of doubt, of dumb and miserable feeling. I was trying to make up my mind to speak to him in those days. I think that in the end I should have done so, with what result I cannot even now imagine, had it not been, first, for the episode of the Russian Baron, and, second, for another matter, infinitely and incomparably more dreadful than any other experience of my life.

The Russian Baron came to “The Pines” one morning about ten days after little Robbie's death. Mrs. Brane received him in the drawing-room, and presently rang the bell and sent Sara upstairs with a message for me.

I came down at once. The Baron sat opposite to Mrs. Brane before the small coal fire. He was a heavy, high-shouldered, bearded man, with that look of having too many and too white teeth which a full black beard gives. His figure reminded me of a dressed-up bolster. It was round and narrow, and without any shape, and it looked soft. His plump hands were buttoned into light-colored gloves, which he had not removed, and his feet were encased in extravagantly long, pointed, very light tan shoes. He kept his eyebrows raised, and his eyes opened so wide that the whites showed above the iris, and this with no sense of effort and for no reason whatever. It disguised every possible expression except one of entirely unwarranted, extreme surprise. At first, when I came into the room, I thought that in some way I must have caused the look, but I soon found that it was habitual to him. Mrs. Brane looked at once nervous, and faintly amused.

“Miss Gale,” she said, “this is Baron Borff.” She consulted the card on her lap. “He was a friend of my husband's when my husband was in Europe, and he, too, like Mr. Dabney, wants to see my husband's collection of Russian books.”

The Baron stood up, and made me a bow so deep that I discovered his hair was parted down the back.

“Mees Gale,” said the Baron, looking up at me while he bowed. He suggested the contortions of a trained sea-animal of some kind.

“I shall have to ask you to show him the books, Miss Gale,” went on Mrs. Brane. “It seems to be one of your principal duties in the house, does n't it! And I certainly did not engage you for a librarian. But I have not been very well since my little boy died—” Her lips quivered and the Baron gave a magnificent, deep, organ-like murmur of sympathy, his unreasonably astonished eyes being fixed meanwhile upon me. In fact, he had stared at me without deviation since my entrance, and I was thoroughly out of countenance.

“It ees true that I should not have intruded myself at this so tragic time into your house of mourning,” he said, “but, unfortunately, my time in your country is so very short that unless I come at this juncture I should not be able to come at all, and so—”

“I understand, of course,” said Mrs. Brane, rising and twisting the Baron's card in her hand. “I am very glad you came. Will you not take dinner with us this evening?”

The Baron looked at me as if for consent or advice, and, thinking that he was considering his hostess's health I made a motion of my lips of “no,” at which he promptly but very politely and effusively declined her hospitality, and followed me out of the room.

Young Dabney met us in the hall. I introduced him to the Baron, who turned very pale, quite green, in fact. I was astonished at this loss of color on his part, especially as Mr. Dabney was extremely polite and gentle with him in his demure way, and strolled beside him into the bookroom chatting in the most friendly fashion, and reminding me of his manner to me on the first afternoon of our acquaintance. The Baron stood in the middle of the bookroom peeling off his gloves as though his hands were wet. His forehead certainly was, and he stayed green and kept those astonished eyes fixed upon me so that I felt like screaming at him to remove them.

Paul Dabney sat on the window seat and took up a book.

“I shall be perfectly quiet, Baron,” he said, “and not disturb your investigations.”

He was admirably quiet, but I could not help but see that he did very little reading. He did not turn a page, but sat with one hand in his pocket. I remembered that he had held his hand just that way on the night of Robbie's death. One of the outdoors men came across the lawn, and began to trim the vine beside one of the open windows. I thought the Baron could not complain of any too much privacy for his researches.

“This is the Russian library,” I said, and led the way to the shelves. He followed me so closely that I could feel his breath on my neck. He was breathing fast, and rather unevenly.

“Thank you so much,” he said. He took out a volume, and rustled the pages. At last, “I wonder if I might be allowed to pursue my studies with no other assistance than yours, Miss Gale,” he asked irritably. He wiped his forehead. “I am a student, a recluse. It is a folly, but these presences”—he pointed towards Mr. Dabney and the man at the window—“disturb me.”

I glanced at Paul Dabney, who smiled and came down from his window seat, moving towards the door, the book under his arm, his hand still in his pocket. He did not say anything, but went out quietly and nearly closed the door. I shut it quite. A second later I heard him speaking to the man outside, and he, too, removed himself. The Baron gave a great whistling sigh of relief, ran to each of the windows in turn, then came back to me and spoke in a low, muttering voice.

“You are incomparable, madame,” he said.

I was perfectly astonished, both at the speech and the manner. But this was my first specimen of the Russian nobility, and supposing that it was the aristocratic Russian method of compliment, I bowed, and was going to follow Mr. Dabney out, when the Baron, kneeling by the bookcase, clutched my skirt in his hand.

“You will not leave me?”

I withdrew my skirt from his grasp. “Not if I can be of any help to you, Baron,” I said and could not restrain a smile, he was so absurd.

“Help? Boje moe! Da!”

He turned from me, and began rapidly to remove all the books from the bookcase. I thought this a peculiar way to pursue studies, especially as he was so frightfully quick about it; I have never seen any one so marvellously quick with his hands, tumbling the books down one after the other. When the case was entirely empty, and I knew that I should have the work of filling it again, he very calmly removed a shelf and began feeling with his fingers along the back of the case. I stared at him, silent and fascinated. I thought him harmlessly insane. He was evidently very much excited. He tapped with his fingers. Perspiration streamed down his face. He glanced at me over his shoulder.

“You see,” he said. “It is back there. Don't you hear?”

I heard that his tapping produced a hollow sound.

“What are you about?” I asked him sternly.

At that he began tumbling the books back in their places as feverishly as he had taken them out. In an incredibly short time they were arranged.

“Yes, yes, you are quite right,” he said as though my bewildered question had been a piece of advice. “Now you see for yourself.” He got up and dusted his knees. “It is much safer for you, but I did not dare to trust it to writing. You have, however, much better opportunities than I knew. It will be in Russian, of course, but that, too, will give you no trouble. I meant to contrive a meeting with Maida, but this is much better.”

I stared at him, open-mouthed, the jargon made no sense at all.

He took my hand and raised it to his lips.

“You are extraordinary, astonishing! Such youth! Such innocence! Bo je moe! How is it done?” He put his mouth close to my ear, and muttered something in Russian, the spitting, purring tongue which I detest. What he said, for I was able to translate it, sent me back, white and shaking into the nearest chair.

“It will not be long, eh?” the Baron had sputtered into my ear, “before the young man, too, is found with three of those golden hairs about his fingers, eh?”

I sat down and covered my eyes with my hands, an action that seemed to throw him into a convulsion of mirth. When I looked up, the abominable, grotesque figure was gone.

I went over to the window. He was walking rapidly down the driveway. As he turned the corner I saw a man step from the side of the road and saunter after him. It was one of the outside men engaged by Mrs. Brane.

I ran upstairs to my own room, and sat down at random in the chair before my dressing-table and rested my head in my hands. I sat there for a long, long time, and I felt that I was fighting against a mist. Just so must some victim dragonfly struggle with the dreadful stickiness of the spider's web. I was blinded mentally by the very meshes that were beginning to wrap round me. I knew now that I was in great danger of some kind, that I was being played with by sinister and evil forces, that, perhaps purposely, I was being terrified and bewildered and mystified. There was none whom I could surely count for a friend, no one except Mary, and how could she or any one else understand the undefined, dreamlike, grotesque forms my experiences had taken. Mrs. Brane, perhaps, was the person for me to take into my confidence, and yet, was it fair to frighten her when she was so delicate? Already one person too many had been frightened in that house. Mr. Dabney was my enemy. No matter what the feeling that possessed his heart, his brain was pitted against me. I was being made a victim, a cat's-paw. But how and by whom? This Baron had treated me as an accomplice. He had showed me a secret. He had made to me a horrible suggestion. The power that had frightened away the three housekeepers, the power that had scared Delia and Jane and Annie from their home, the power that had thrown little Robbie into the convulsions that caused his death, the power that had taken every one but me and the Lorrences—for Mary now slept near Mrs. Brane—out of the northern wing—this power was threatening Paul Dabney and, from the Baron's whispered words, I understood that it was threatening Paul Dabney through me. Was it not a supernatural evil? Was I not perhaps possessed? Could I be driven to commit crimes and to leave as evidence against myself those strands of hair? Flesh and blood could not bear the horror of all this. I would go to Mr. Dabney at once.

With this resolution to comfort me, I rose and made myself ready for dinner. It was too late to change my dress, but Mrs. Brane was not particular as to our dressing for dinner; besides, my frock was neat and fresh, a soft gray crÊpe with wide white collar and cuffs. My working dresses were all made alike and trimmed in this Quaker style which I had found becoming. I thought that, in spite of extreme pallor and shadows under my eyes, I looked rather pretty. I believe that was the last evening when I took any particular pleasure in my own looks. I was rather nervous over my impending interview with Paul Dabney and it was with a certain relief that I heard from Mrs. Brane in the diningroom that our guest had gone out and would not be back that night.

“How queer it seems to be alone again!” she said, but I thought she looked more alarmed than relieved.

That night, however, in spite of her timidity, she was in better spirits than I had seen her since Robbie's death. Her listlessness was not quite so extreme as usual, she even chatted about her youth and dances she used to go to. She must have been as pretty as a fairy and she had evidently been something of a belle, though I have noticed that all Southern women see themselves in retrospect as the center of a little throng of suitors. Mary waited on us, for Henry had the toothache and had gone to bed. It was quite a cozy and cheerful meal. In spite of myself, the disagreeable impression produced by the Baron faded a little from my mind and, as it faded, another feeling began to strengthen. In other words, I began to be acutely curious about the hollow sound produced by tapping on the back of that bookcase.

“I think you made a great impression on the Baron, Miss Gale,” said Mrs. Brane teasingly as we sat at our coffee in the drawing-room; “he really seemed unable to take his eyes off you. I don't wonder. You are really extraordinarily pretty in an odd way.”

“In an odd way?” I could n't help asking.

“Why, yes, you are the strangest-looking pretty girl I've ever seen. You know, my dear, if I should catalogue your features no one would think it the portrait of an angelic-looking creature. It would sound like a vixen. Now, stiffen up your vanity and listen.” She looked me over and gave me this description. “You have fiery hair, in the first place, which is the right color for a vixen, you know, and you have a long, slender, pale face, and green-blue eyes, though they do look black at night and gray sometimes, but still they are the real Becky Sharp color and no mistake. You have very thin, red lips, and, if their expression was not so unmistakably sweet, I should say they were frightfully capable of looking cruel and—well, yes—mean.”

“Oh, Mrs. Brane, what a dreadful portrait!”

“What did I tell you? It is true, too, line by line, and yet you are quite the loveliest-looking woman I have ever seen. Miss Gale, come, now, you must see the impression you make. Are you not concerned over the condition of poor Paul Dabney?”

“I have not noticed his condition,” said I bitterly.

She shook her head at me. “Fibs!” she said. “The poor boy is as restless as a hawk. He is getting pale and thin and gaunt. He eats nothing. He can't let you out of his sight.”

“If he is consumed by love of me,” I said, “it is strange that he has never confided to me as to his sufferings.”

“But has n't he really, Janice?—I am just going to call you by your first name, may I?” I was so grateful to her for the pretty way she said it and for the sweet look she gave me, that I kissed the hand she held out.

“Has n't he really made love to you, Janice? I could have sworn that, during all those hours you two have spent in the bookroom, something of the sort was going on.”

“Nothing of the sort at all. In fact, Mrs. Brane, I think that Paul Dabney dislikes me very much.”

She thought this over, stirring her coffee absently and staring into the coalfire. “It is rather mysterious, but, sometimes, I have thought that too. At least, his feeling for you is very strong, one way or the other. Sometimes it has seemed to me that he both hates and loves you. How do you treat him, Janice?”

I tried to avoid her eyes. “Not any way at all,” I stammered. “That is, just the way I feel, with polite indifference.”

Mrs. Brane gave a little trill of sad laughter. “Oh, how I am enjoying this nonsense, Janice! I have n't talked such delicious stuff for years. No, dear, you don't treat him with polite indifference at all. You treat him with the most dreadful and crushing and stately hauteur imaginable. Now, you were much more affable with the Baron.”

I gave a little involuntary shiver.

“How ridiculous that creature was, was n't he?” laughed Mrs. Brane. “I could hardly keep my face straight as I looked at him. He was like a make-up of some kind. He did n't seem real, do you know what I mean? I wish he had stayed to dinner. He would have amused me.”

“He did n't amuse me,” I said positively; “I thought he was detestable.”

“Poor Baron Borff! And he was so enamoured. You have a very hard heart, Janice. Never mind, when I get rich, I'll set you up like a queen. You must not be a housekeeper always even if you do refuse to be a baroness. You did n't know I had hopes of wealth, did you?” She looked rather sly as she put this question.

“I had fancied it, Mrs. Brane,” I said.

She looked about the room nervously and lowered her voice.

“It is so queer, Janice,” she said; then she moved over to the sofa where I sat and spoke very low indeed: “It is so queer to have a fortune and—not to know where it is.”

I, too, looked anxiously about me, even behind me where there was no possible space for a listener.

“If you would only tell me, Mrs. Brane,” I began earnestly,—“if you would only tell me something, about this fortune of yours, I feel that I might be able to help you. Mrs. Brane, does any one know? Mr. Dabney, for instance?”

“No,” she murmured. “I have never told any one; I ought not to tell you.—Oh, Mary, is that you? How you made me jump! I suppose it's bedtime.”

“Yes'm,” said Mary, “and past bedtime. Don't you want to get strong and well, Mrs. Brane?”

She laughed and stood up obediently, gave me a look that said “Hush,” and followed Mary out. I took up a book and began to read.

After an hour or two, oppressed by the dead stillness of the house, I went upstairs to my own room.

But I did not undress. The most overwhelming desire possessed me suddenly to go down to the bookroom and to discover, if I could, the secret of the bookcase. There is no doubt about it, there is the blood of adventurers in my veins. Danger is a real temptation to me, danger and the devious way. I would rather, I believe, be playing with peril than not.

The house was very silent. I was alone in the old wing. My nerves had been badly shaken only that afternoon, but I was keen for adventure. Curiosity was far stronger than my fears. I took off my shoes and opened the door. A faint light shone at the far end of the passage, the night light that Mrs. Brane had been burning there since Robbie's death. I walked along the hallway to the stairs. I had never realized before how noiseless one may be in stocking feet, nor how noisy an old floor is of itself under the quietest step. Boards snapped under me like pistol shots. But no one in the sleeping house seemed the wiser for my stealthy passing. I got down the stairs and found my way into the bookroom, saw that the shutters were all tightly fastened and the shades drawn down. Then I lighted the gas-jet near the Russian collection and knelt before it on the floor.

I began quietly to take out the books, as I had seen the Baron take them. I had removed perhaps half a dozen from the middle shelf when the strangest feeling made me look around.

The door of the bookroom was open and I had left it shut. I rose to my feet. At the same instant something just outside the threshold of the door seemed to rise to its feet. I looked at it. It was myself.

There is no way of describing the horror of such a sight.

This figure wore my dress of gray with its Quaker collar and cuffs, its long, slender face was framed in fiery hair, its green-blue eyes, narrow and long-lashed, were fixed on mine. There was no mirror outside of that door; besides, no mirror could have reflected the look of white damnation that possessed this face. Haggard and hard and vile, with a wicked, stony leer in the eyes, with a wicked, tight smile on the lips, with a blasted, devastated look too dreadful to describe, it faced me. And it was myself, as I might have been after a lifetime of crime and cruelty.

I stood and looked at it till a black cloud seemed to roll up over it, from which for a second its evil countenance smiled imperturbably at me. Then the face, too, was blotted out and I fell down on the floor.