Woolper could find no
answer. She knew that the pain and horror which she felt were something
more than natural, but beyond this point her thoughts refused to travel.
A superstitious feeling arose at this point, to usurp the office of
reason, and she accounted for the strangeness of Miss Halliday's illness
as she might have done had she lived in the sixteenth century, and been
liable to the suspicion of nocturnal careerings on broomsticks.
"I'm sorry Mr. Philip's house should be unlucky to that sweet young
creature," she said to herself. "It was unlucky to the father; and now it
seems as if it was going to be unlucky to the daughter. And Mr. Philip
won't be any richer for her death. Mrs. Sheldon has told me times and
often that all Tom Halliday's money went to my master when she married
him, and he has doubled and trebled it by his cleverness. Miss
Charlotte's death wouldn't bring him a sixpence."
This was the gist of Mrs. Woolper's meditations very often nowadays. But
the strange sense of perplexity, the nameless fear, the vague horror,
were not to be banished from her mind. A sense of some shapeless presence
for ever at her side haunted her by day and night. What was it? What did
its presence portend? It was as if a figure, shrouded from head to foot,
was there, dark and terrible, at her elbow, and she would not turn to
meet the horror face to face.
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