Come to
me." Her hand dropped from my bosom. The pale light in which she
stood quivered, sunk, vanished. I saw the twilight glimmering
between the curtains--and I saw no more. She had spoken. She had
gone.
I was near Miss Dunross--near enough, when I put out my hand, to
touch her.
She started and shuddered, like a woman suddenly awakened from a
dreadful dream.
"Speak to me!" she whispered. "Let me know that it is _you_ who
touched me."
I spoke a few composing words before I questioned her.
"Have you seen anything in the room?"
She answered. "I have been filled with a deadly fear. I have seen
nothing but the writing-case lifted from my lap."
"Did you see the hand that lifted it?"
"No."
"Did you see a starry light, and a figure standing in it?"
"No."
"Did you see the writing-case after it was lifted from your lap?"
"I saw it resting on my shoulder."
"Did you see writing on the letter, which was not _your_
writing?"
"I saw a darker shadow on the paper than the shadow in which I am
sitting."
"Did it move?"
"It moved across the paper."
"As a pen moves in writing?"
"Yes. As a pen moves in writing."
"May I take the letter?"
She handed it to me.
"May I light a candle?"
She drew her veil more closely over her face, and bowed in
silence.
I lighted the candle on the mantel-piece, and looked for the
writing.
There, on the blank space in the letter, as I had seen it before
on the blank space in the sketch-book--there were the written
words which the ghostly Presence had left behind it; arranged
once more in two lines, as I copy them here:
At the month's end, In the shadow of Saint Paul's.
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