meone were in hiding there; and that low faint sobbing sigh
which quivered through the room, like an accent of unutterable sorrow,
whence did it come? Others than myself were surely there, though I might
not be able to see them.

I knelt on the _prie-dieu_, stirring neither hand nor foot; as
immovable, in fact, except for my breathing, as a figure cut out of
stone. Looking and wondering still, after a time it seemed to me that
the lights were growing dimmer, that the room was growing colder; that
some baleful presence was beside me with malicious intent to gradually
numb and chill the life out of me, to freeze me, body and soul, till the
two could no longer hold together; and that when morning came, if ever
it did come to that accursed room, my husk would be there indeed, but
Janet Hope herself would be gone for ever. A viewless horror stirred my
hair, and caused my flesh to creep. The baneful influence that was upon
me was deepening in intensity; every minute that passed seemed to render
me more powerless to break the spell. Suddenly the clock struck two. At
the same moment a light footfall sounded on the stairs outside. It was
Sister Agnes coming back to lock the door, and to fetch the key which
she had left behind two hours before. I heard her approach the door, and
I saw the door itself pulled close to; then the key was turned, the bolt
shot into its place, the key was withdrawn, and I was left locked up
alone in that terrible room.

But the proximity of another human being sufficed to break the spell
under which I had been powerless only a minute before. Better risk
discovery, better risk everything, than be left to pass the night where
I was. Should that horror settle down upon me again, I felt that I must
succumb to it. It would crush the life out of me as infallibly as though
I were in the folds of some huge python. Long before morning I should be
dead.

I slid from off the _prie-dieu_, and walking backward, with my eyes
glancing warily to right and left, I reached the door and struck it with
my fists. "Sister Agnes!" I cried, "Sister Agnes! do not leave me. I am
here alone."

Again the curtains rustled, stirred by invisible fingers; again that
faint long-drawn sigh ran like an audible shiver through the room. I
heard eager fingers busy outside the door; a mist swam up before my
eyes, and next moment I fainted dead away in the arms of Sister Agnes.

For three weeks after that time I lay very ill--lay very c