"Mercy on us!" I cried. "Tell me what this means. Are you mad?"
She put her soft hand on my cheek for a second.
"No," said she, with a voice growing as hard as the rattling of wire nails. "Do as I say. Do it for the sake of the lives of all of us!"
I believed then that she was sane. There was something in her eyes, as I have said, that would have tamed a tiger. I got up. I did everything she had asked. The furnishings were all moved out of her room until it looked as bare as a place to rent in December. There was nothing on the floor but a mattress and a chair, which were left by her directions. I sent the servants away with instructions to come back after three weeks' time. At last, when all was done and I was alone, walking through the house like a sour-faced ghost, I climbed the stairs to her door. It was locked! I have not caught sight of her face since!
I cannot tell any one what I have been through in these days of waiting. I only know it has been like a terrible dream--like those dreams that make the perspiration come out on the forehead with the struggle to wake or cry out or toss the smothering thing from off a body's lungs and heart. And till now, in spite of all, I have been faithful enough to my trust.
I have turned away all the visitors that came. I have gone each morning to my mistress's door for orders that were spoken through the panels. I have walked up and down the silent rooms below, day after day, or sat in the library trying to read and listening to the tread of some one in that awful room above, with every hour dragging as if the hands of the clock on the mantel were slipping back almost as fast as they moved forward. Then the steps would stop and the clock would go on with its everlasting ticking. And if I listened hard, I could hear the big clock in the hall take up the tune like a duet. Then the one in the front room above would join in, then the one in the kitchen, until there was such a clamor of ticking that it would drive a body to distraction with a sound like a hundred typewriters all going at once.
I have heard voices, too. Voices seemed to be whispering in the hall as if some one were welcoming people at a funeral, voices seemed to be chatting in the basement, and again there would be a murmur like a rabble of voices all talking together in a room far away. Often it was more than a fancy, I can tell you. I heard real voices in the room of my mistress.