Now the moon is high; and the great house, needing habitation more than ever, is like a body without life. Now it is even awful, stealing through it, to think of the live people who have slept in the solitary bedrooms, to say nothing of the dead. Now is the time for shadow, when every corner is a cavern and every downward step a pit, when the stained glass is reflected in pale and faded hues upon the floors, when anything and everything can be made of the heavy staircase beams excepting their own proper shapes, when the armour has dull lights upon it not easily to be distinguished from stealthy movement, and when barred helmets are frightfully suggestive of heads inside. But of all the shadows in Chesney Wold, the shadow in the long drawing-room upon my Lady’s picture is the first to come, the last to be disturbed. At this hour and by this light it changes into threatening hands raised up and menacing the handsome face with every breath that stirs.
“She is not well, ma’am,” says a groom in Mrs. Rouncewell’s audience-chamber.
“My Lady not well! What’s the matter?”
“Why, my Lady has been but poorly, ma’am, since she was last here—I don’t mean with the family, ma’am, but when she was here as a bird of passage like. My Lady has not been out much, for her, and has kept her room a good deal.”
“Chesney Wold, Thomas,” rejoins the housekeeper with proud complacency, “will set my Lady up! There is no finer air and no healthier soil in the world!”
Thomas may have his own personal opinions on this subject, probably hints them in his manner of smoothing his sleek head from the nape of his neck to his temples, but he forbears to express them further and retires to the servants’ hall to regale on cold meat-pie and ale.