It is too large, too cold for my taste. It stands too much exposed to the wind." "It does! it does!" There was a note of regret in his voice. He let the
curtain fall and looked about him rather wildly. "And now, Charles," she said, "shall we not say our prayers and retire
to rest." "If I had only thought of it," he said, "I might have said my prayers in
the chapel. But there was much to do. I thought of calling you,
Catherine, for you make a better sacristan than I. Then I remembered
Boney--poor little Boney crushed by the miller's dray--and how you cried
all night, and that though I promised you a far finer, cleverer dog than
that poor old friend had ever been. Collins said, 'Why, sir, you should
have hid the old dog's death from the mistress till the morning!' A
worthy fellow, Collins. He meant no disrespect to me. At that time,
d'you remember, Collins had only been in my service a few months?" *       *       *       *       *

It was an hour later. From where she lay in bed, Catherine Nagle with
dry, aching eyes stared into the fire, watching the wood embers turn
from red to grey. By her side, his hand in hers, Charles slept the
dreamless, heavy slumber of a child. Scarcely breathing, in her anxiety lest he should wake, she loosened her
hand, and with a quick movement slipped out of bed. The fire was burning
low, but Catherine saw everything in the room very clearly, and she
threw over her night-dress a long cloak, and wound about her head the
scarf which she had worn during her walk to the wood. It was not the first time Mrs. Nagle had risen thus in the still night
and sought refuge from herself and from her thoughts in the chapel; and
her husband had never missed her from his side. As she crept round the dimly lit gallery she passed by the great bowl of
pot-pourri by which Charles Nagle had lingered, and there came to her
the thought that it might perchance be well for her to discover, before
the servants should have a chance of doing so, what he had doubtless
hidden there. Catherine plunged both her hands into the scented rose-leaves, and she
gave a sudden cry of pain--for her fingers had closed on the sharp edge
of a steel blade. Then she drew out a narrow damascened knife, one
which her husband, taken by its elegant shape, had purchased long
before in Italy. Mrs. Nagle's brow furrowed in vexation--Collins should have put the
dangerous toy out of his master's reach. Slipping the knife into the
deep pocket of her cloak, she hurried on into the unlit passage leading
to the chapel. *       *       *       *       *

Save for the hanging lamp, which since Mr. Dorriforth had said Mass
there that morning signified the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, the
chapel should have been in darkness. But as Catherine passed through the
door she saw, with sudden, uneasy amazement, the farther end of the
chapel in a haze of brightness. Below the altar, striking upwards from the floor of the sanctuary,
gleamed a corona of light. Charles--she could not for a moment doubt
that it was Charles's doing--had moved the six high, heavy silver
candlesticks which always stood on either side of the altar, and had
placed them on the ground. There, in a circle, the wax candles blazed, standing sentinel-wise about
a dark, round object which was propped up on a pile of altar-linen
carefully arranged to support it. Fear clutched at Catherine's heart--such fear as even in the early days
of Charles's madness had never clutched it. She was filled with a
horrible dread, and a wild, incredulous dismay. What was the Thing, at once so familiar and so terribly strange, that
Charles had brought out of the November night and placed with so much
care below the altar? But the thin flames of the candles, now shooting up, now guttering low,
blown on by some invisible current of strong air, gave no steady light. Staying still close to the door, she sank down on her knees, and
desiring to shut out, obliterate, the awful sight confronting her, she
pressed both her hands to her eyes. But that availed her nothing. Suddenly there rose up before Catherine Nagle a dreadful scene of that
great Revolution drama of which she had been so often told as a child. She saw, with terrible distinctness, the severed heads of men and women
borne high on iron pikes, and one of these blood-streaked, livid faces
was that of James Mottram--the wide-open, sightless eyes, his eyes.... There also came back to her as she knelt there, shivering with cold and
anguish, the story of a French girl of noble birth who, having bought
her lover's head from the executioner, had walked with it in her arms
to the village near Paris where stood his deserted château. Slowly she rose from her knees, and with her hands thrown out before
her, she groped her way to the wall and there crept along, as if a
precipice lay on her other side. At last she came to the narrow oak door which gave on to the staircase
leading into the open air. The door was ajar; it was from there that
blew the current of air which caused those thin, fantastic flames to
flare and gutter in the awful stillness. She drew the door to, and went on her way, so round to the altar. In the
now steadier light Catherine saw that the large missal lay open at the
Office for the Dead. She laid her hands with a blind instinct upon the altar, and felt a
healing touch upon their palms. Henceforth--and Catherine Nagle was
fated to live many long years--she remained persuaded that it was then
there had come to her a shaft of divine light piercing the dark recesses
of her soul. For it was at that moment that there came to her the
conviction, and one which never faltered, that Charles Nagle had done no
injury to James Mottram. And there also came to her then the swift
understanding of what others would believe, were there to be found in
the private chapel of Edgecombe Manor that which now lay on the ground
behind her, close to her feet. So understanding, Catherine suddenly saw the way open before her, and
the dread thing which she must do if Charles were to be saved from a
terrible suspicion--one which would undoubtedly lead to his being taken
away from her and from all that his poor, atrophied heart held dear, to
be asylumed. With steps that did not falter, Catherine Nagle went behind the altar
into the little sacristy, there to seek in the darkness an altar-cloth. Holding the cloth up before her face she went back into the lighted
chapel, and kneeling down, she uncovered her face and threw the cloth
over what lay before her. And then Catherine's teeth began to chatter, and a mortal chill overtook
her. She was being faced by a new and to her a most dread enemy, for
till to-night she and that base physical fear which is the coward's foe
had never met. Pressing her hands together, she whispered the short,
simple prayer for the Faithful Departed that she had said so often and,
she now felt, so unmeaningly.