“Lor, sir, where have you been?” she cried, but strange to say, in a low tone. “You look as if you had seen a ghost.” And her eyes turned suspiciously to the key which I held in my hand.
I felt as if someone had clutched me round the throat. Thrusting the key into my pocket, I took a step towards her. “I will tell you what I have seen if you will come downstairs,” I whispered; “the ladies will be disturbed if we talk here,” and smoothing my brow as best I could, I put out my hand and drew her towards me. What my motive was I hardly knew; the action was probably instinctive; but when I saw the look which came into her face as I touched her, and the alacrity with which she prepared to follow me, I took courage, remembering the one or two previous tokens I had had of this girl’s unreasonable susceptibility to my influence; a susceptibility which I now felt could be utilized and made to serve my purpose.
Taking her down to the parlor floor, I drew her into the depths of the great drawing-room, and there told her in the least alarming way possible what had happened to Mr. Leavenworth. She was of course intensely agitated, but she did not scream;—the novelty of her position evidently bewildering her—and, greatly relieved, I went on to say that I did not know who committed the deed, but that folks would declare it was I if they knew I had been seen by her on the stairs with the library key in my hand. “But I won’t tell,” she whispered, trembling violently in her fright and eagerness. “I will keep it to myself. I will say I didn’t see anybody.” But I soon convinced her that she could never keep her secret if the police once began to question her, and, following up my argument with a little cajolery, succeeded after a long while in winning her consent to leave the house till the storm should be blown over. But that given, it was some little time before I could make her comprehend that she must depart at once and without going back after her things. Not till I brightened up her wits by a promise to marry her some day if she only obeyed me now, did she begin to look the thing in the face and show any evidence of the real mother wit she evidently possessed. “Mrs. Belden would take me in,” said she, “if I could only get to R⸺. She takes everybody in who asks, her; and she would keep me, too, if I told her Miss Mary sent me. But I can’t get there tonight.”
I immediately set to work to convince her that she could. The midnight train did not leave the city for a half-hour yet, and the distance to the depot could be easily walked by her in fifteen minutes. But she had no money! I easily supplied that. And she was afraid she couldn’t find her way! I entered into minutest directions. She still hesitated, but at length consented to go, and with some further understanding of the method I was to employ in communicating with her, we went downstairs. There we found a hat and shawl of the cook’s which I put on her, and in another moment we were in the carriage yard. “Remember, you are to say nothing of what has occurred, no matter what happens,” I whispered in parting injunction as she turned to leave me. “Remember, you are to come and marry me some day,” she murmured in reply, throwing her arms about my neck. The movement was sudden, and it was probably at this time she dropped the candle she had unconsciously held clenched in her hand till now. I promised her, and she glided out of the gate.
Of the dreadful agitation that followed the disappearance of this girl I can give no better idea than by saying I not only committed the additional error of locking up the house on my re-entrance, but omitted to dispose of the key then in my pocket by flinging it into the street or dropping it in the hall as I went up. The fact is, I was so absorbed by the thought of the danger I stood in from this girl, I forgot everything else. Hannah’s pale face, Hannah’s look of terror, as she turned from my side and flitted down the street, were continually before me. I could not escape them; the form of the dead man lying below was less vivid. It was as though I were tied in fancy to this woman of the white face fluttering down the midnight streets. That she would fail in something—come back or be brought back—that I should find her standing white and horror-stricken on the front
