The Other Side of the Door

hought it was my head. I opened my eyes and found I was looking straight up into the sky. I lay staring at it, it was so wonderfully sof

all. The memory of what had happened returned. I scrambled to a sitting posture. My head was so dizzy that I had to catch at the bushes to hold myself upright, an

ass, across the dank and mossy paths, and into the shadowy length of the corridor. This, too, was empty, and at one end of it a little door, with a grill across it, seemed as effectually to bar me out as the Spanish Woman's house had shut me in. In my dazed state the only thing I co

ther Superior," I sai

, a little as if she were frightened. "W

l the Spanish Woman had rung. Then, as the sister appeared to be about to draw back, "

grating, and another face, rounder and larger than the first, peered out; and a mo

d put my hat straight, and smoothed my hair very kindly but rather clumsily with hands like white pincushions. At last, with the timid nun following furtively at her heels, the Mother Superior came. She was a thin woman in flowing robes, with a great white sheer coif around her delicate face; and she looked at me very kindly and benevolently while I stammered out th

at them, and said to me: "Can you

erly gave her the number and the street. "And if you will only send for a carriag

rents," she said in a soothing voi

not in town. He will not be back until night, and I can perfectly well go home alone!

ed surprised when she heard it and not quite as if she believed me, but all sh

glooms of the Spanish Woman's house, to be in this bare, whitewashed place, where all the light fell unobstructed through little, narrow windows placed high up in the walls. There were no mirrors here, not one, to reflect one's figure; and it was only wh

from a glass a hideous memory sprang in my mind, and I had struck and knocked the glass out of her hand before I could t

e one to come and tell me I could go home. Finally, I seemed at last really to be going. The only trouble was

en her to that infernal house, either for the sake of getting evidence or any other thing." The second retorted, "Well, I wanted to keep her out of t

candle flames, just above me, I saw Mr. Dingley's face. "Y

Superior's, put in, "she says and does such strange thing

ed father's voice. "Yes, that was quite right. She wa

me home!

ing sort of reassurance which the Mother Supe

they thought that I didn't k

nd knew that to be ridiculous, but everything conspired to make familiar people strange. What was it Mr. Dingley had been telling father jus

this undertaking was much more

me all the while, he said, and how had I got out without his seeing me? He had hunted all through the rooms on the lower f

stions and answers, Mr. Dingley's all mixed in with mine; and when they did let me speak uninterruptedly I was so excited that the words came tumbling out, all confused. It seemed to me, too, that father was much more anxious over the fact that I was feverish and had a lump on my forehead, than the fact t

efully puzzled to see how they could have missed it. But I was to learn no more until the following day, when, lying in bed, stiff and sore, with every muscle in my arms a

fancy of mine, and that she could not bear to have such damaging testimony given so recklessly. She had thought, so she said, that being a woman she might perhaps know better how to elicit the real facts of the case from me, since the men,-lawyers, police officers and even my father,-might very well have frightened away my memory by their manner of going about it. But when I had been so

n waiting for me, as he had said he would, down-stairs; bu

time before; and yet, when I considered, I couldn't contradict a thing. The incidents were there, but somehow they all

rching for me, the windows had been closed and locked fast and the police had declared there was no

and locked the window again; and there was a hole in the wall, or how could I have

led. "But about the wine-I don't

n that extraordinary house which could not be explained away! I knew past any doubting, that the Spanish Woman had tried to bribe me, had tried to poison me, and failing that would have detained me by force, if I had not got out of the window. And, if I should tell him the whole adventure now while it was so burning fresh in my own mind, with all its suggestive atmosphere, its eloquent details, couldn't I make him see it as I saw it? No. The Spanish Woman h

he frightened me-the Spanish Woman

gly. "You have been much over-wrought, and this infernal performance has thrown you into hysterics. But that wall, child-an awful dr

een, how were it not for that bold leap of mine there w

look anxiously at me. "Of course, Dingley is going to have the matter inve

from her that would warrant such a thing; and though father seemed vexed and d

at morning a piece of news had come to me which had only succeeded in strengthening my belief in the meaning of the Spanish Woman's

en. She said she had been interested in Mr. Montgomery as a woman might be who was old enough to be his mother, but that Rood had been her husband and that she had loved and been faithful to him. She was wonderfully calm and convincing, Mr. Ferguson had said, and it looked at first as if her testimony would help the defense very

m, to find she had only made things worse. Father said that when she realiz

involved in sending for me to come to her house. She must have been desperate. But, what I could not understa

so there would be no second chance of escape-all these things I heard without their being able to rouse in me any special interest. My mind was fixed on the under-currents. I couldn't explain them to father because I didn't understand them mys

protection? Her power of persuasion-it was that which was her magic! Thus far father was the only one who seemed untouched by it. Even I had felt the pressure of it. Those appeals

sed or convicted it would be in any way for my happiness? Suppose, with her dark power, she was going to be the enchantress to-morrow. Was she again going to scatter, in some unforeseen and uncombatible way, all my testimony, and triumphantly see the prisoner acquitted? Oughtn't I to be glad that he would be free? Ah, th