Its head being kept bent,
she was unable to see the face in full, but every instant she expected
the revelation would take place, and with each separate movement of
the phantasm her suspense became more and more intolerable. At last it
stood on the floor of the cellar, a broad, ungainly, horribly ungainly
figure, that glided up to and past her into the far cellar. There it
halted, as nearly as she could judge on the new tiles, and remained
standing. As she gazed at it, too fascinated to remove her eyes, there
was a loud, reverberating crash, a hideous sound of wrenching and
tearing, and the whole of the ceiling of the inner chamber came down
with an appalling roar. Lady Adela thinks that she must then have
fainted, for she distinctly remembers falling--falling into what
seemed to her a black, interminable abyss. When she recovered
consciousness, she was lying on the tiles, and all around was still
and normal. She got up, found and lighted her candle, and spent the
rest of the evening, without further adventure, in the drawing-room.
All the week Lady Adela struggled hard to master a disinclination to
spend another evening alone in the house, and when Friday came she
succumbed to her fears. The servants were poor, foolish things, but it
was nice to feel that there was something in the house besides ghosts.
She sat reading in the drawing-room till late that night, and when she
lolled out of the window to take a farewell look at the sky and stars
before retiring to rest, the sounds of traffic had completely ceased
and the whole city lay bathed in a refreshing silence.
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