So she locked the
garden door quickly, looking over her shoulder for she knew not what,
and ran faster than she often did along the sombre walk up to the hall
door, and told her tale to Moggy, and begged to carry the pail in by the
hall-door.
In they came, and Moggy shut the hall-door, and turned the key in it.
Perhaps 'twas the state in which the poor lady lay up stairs that helped
to make them excited and frightened. Betty was sitting by her bedside,
and Toole had been there, and given her some opiate, I suppose, for she
had dropped into a flushed snoring sleep, a horrid counterfeit of
repose. But she had first had two or three frightful fits, and all sorts
of wild, screaming talk between. Perhaps it was the apparition of Mary
Matchwell, whose evil influence was so horribly attested by the dismal
spectacle she had left behind her, that predisposed them to panic; but
assuredly each anticipated no good from the master's absence, and had a
foreboding of something bad, of which they did not speak; but only
disclosed it by looks, and listening, and long silences. The lights
burning in Nutter's study invited them, and there the ladies seated
themselves, and made their tea in the kitchen tea-pot, and clapped it on
the hob, and listened for sounds from Mrs.
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