The proprietor knew nothing about the
invalid, except that her name was Vining, and that she had, at one
period of her career, been an actress. He had noticed that she had
looked ill on her arrival the previous week. Two days after her
arrival, she had complained of feeling very ill, and the doctor, who
had been summoned to attend her, said that she was suffering from a
very loathsome Oriental disease, which, fortunately is, in this
country, rare. The hotel, though newly decorated and equipped
throughout with every up-to-date convenience, was in reality very
old. It was one of those delightfully roomy erections that seem built
for eternity rather than time, and for comfort rather than economy of
space. The interior, with its oak-panelled walls, polished oak floors,
and low ceilings, traversed with ponderous oaken beams, also impressed
me pleasantly, whilst a flight of broad, oak stairs, fenced with
balustrades a foot thick, brought me to a seemingly interminable
corridor, into which the door of Miss Vining's room opened. It was a
low, wainscoted apartment, and its deep-set window, revealing the
thickness of the wall, looked out upon a dismal yard littered with
brooms and buckets. Opposite the foot of the bed--a modern French
bedstead, by the bye, whose brass fittings and somewhat flimsy
hangings were strangely incongruous with their venerable
surroundings--was an ingle, containing the smouldering relics of what
had doubtless been intended for a fire, but which needed considerable
coaxing before it could be converted from a pretence to a reality.
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