She sat in her chair there in the drawing-room, drawn away from the fire's heat, her eyes fixed on vacancy, her pretty hands lying weary. What was that heat compared to the heat that raged within, the mind's fever?
"If it could but end!" she murmured to herself; "if we could but go back to our home at Katterley!"
Strange to say--and yet perhaps not strange, for the natural working out of a course of events is often hidden to the chief actor in it--the dream and its superstitious dread had faded away from Clara's memory. Of course she had not forgotten the fact; whenever she thought of it, as she did at odd times, its features presented themselves to her as vividly as ever. But the dread of it was gone. When day succeeded day, week succeeded week, bringing no appearance of any tragic end for her, accident or else, that could put her into a hearse, the foreboding fear quite subsided. Besides, Clara Lake looked upon the accident to the railway-train that Sunday night as the one that would have killed her had she only been in it. So the dream and its superstition had become as a thing of the past.
Lonely, dispirited, unusually low, felt she this afternoon. Mr. Lake had gone over in the morning to Katterley to see how their house was progressing, and she began to wonder that he was not back. They had taken dinner early that day, and Lady Ellis had disappeared after it. When Mr. Lake was away she would invariably go up to her room after dinner, saying she had letters to write. Shrewd Fanny Chester, taking after her quick mother, said my lady went up to get a nap, not to write. Mrs. Chester was in the nursery, where she had a dressmaker at work, making clothes for her children; Anna was helping; and Clara was alone.
It may as well be mentioned that the mystery attaching to the cause of the railway accident had not been solved yet. The coroner and jury had met regularly once a fortnight since, and as regularly adjourned the inquest. In the teeth of Colonel West's most positive testimony, it was impossible to bring in a verdict against Cooper, the driver; in the teeth of Oliver Jupp's, it was equally impossible to exonerate him. No other witnesses, save the parties interested, appeared to have seen the lights that night. The public were fairly nonplussed, the coroner and jury sick to death of the affair. The young person now working for Mrs. Chester was Cooper's sister.