“Do not thank me,” said Augustine; “if you know my sister you have a right to come in; but I always help the weary; do not thank me. I do it to take away the curse from the house.”
The stranger did not know what she meant, but stood by her in the dark, drawing a long, hard breath, and staring at her with dark, mysterious, almost menacing, eyes.
“Here is some one, Susan, who knows you,” said Augustine, introducing the newcomer into the drawing-room where her sister sat. It was a wainscoted room, very handsome and warm in its brown panelling, in which the firelight shone reflected. There was a bright fire, and the room doubled itself by means of a large mirror over the mantelpiece, antique like the house, shining out of black wood and burnished brass. Miss Susan sat by the fire with her knitting, framing one of those elaborate meshes of casuistry which I have already referred to. The table close by her was heaped with books, drawings for the chantry, and for the improvement of an old house in the neighborhood which she had bought in order to be independent, whatever accidents might happen. She was more tranquil than usual in the quiet of her thoughts, having made an effort to dismiss the more painful subject altogether, and to think only of the immediate future as it appeared now in the light of Herbert’s recovery. She was thinking how to improve the house she had bought, which at present bore the unmeaning title of St. Augustine’s Grange, and which she mirthfully announced her intention of calling Gray-womans, as a variation upon Whiteladies. Miss Susan was sixty, and pretended to no lingering of youthfulness; but she was so strong and full of life that nobody thought of her as an old woman, and though she professed, as persons of her age do, to have but a small amount of life left, she had no real feeling to this effect (as few have), and was thinking of her future house and planning conveniences for it as carefully as if she expected to live in it for a hundred years. If she had been doing this with the immediate prospect of leaving Whiteladies before her, probably she might have felt a certain pain; but as she had no idea of leaving Whiteladies, there was nothing to disturb the pleasure with which almost every mind plans and plots the arrangement of a house. It is one of the things which everybody likes to attempt, each of us having a confidence that we shall succeed in it. By the fire which felt so warmly pleasant in contrast with the grayness without, having just decided with satisfaction that it was late enough to have the lamp lighted, the curtains drawn, and the grayness shut out altogether; and with the moral consolation about her of having got rid of her spectre, and of having been happily saved from all consequences of her wickedness, Miss Susan sat pondering her new house, and knitting her shawl, mind and hands alike occupied, and as near being happy as most women of sixty ever succeed in being. She turned round with a smile as Augustine spoke.