I don't know. She made me think of you. She had a big nosegay in her hand.'

Miss Kezia's lips pinched themselves together.

'Run away and finish your duties, Sarah. This lady has no doubt gone into the house, where she is waiting for me.'

Dismissing the kitchen-maid, Miss Faunce continued her slow walk towards the terrace.

So, Martha had come to Stibbards. Now, why? And in what devilish mood of mockery and spite? Was she going to be married or to enter a convent? Was she at least leaving the stage and her disgraceful manner of life? Miss Kezia felt her thin cheeks flush. Martha had come, bringing with her the bouquet.

The last bouquet?

'She means to disgrace me, I suppose. To make a scandal and a talk all over the place. Perhaps she has lost all her money and may be dependent on me, after all.'

Her thoughts full of hate, Miss Kezia Faunce entered the house which seemed to her more than usually quiet. If Martha had left the side kitchen door and gone through the gate in the privet hedge and then been lost sight of by Sarah, she must have entered the house by the front door. So Miss Kezia Faunce went directly to that and looked in the hall.

This was empty.

'I suppose that she would, even after all these years, remember the place very well. She has probably gone to the green parlour, where she used to sit and do her lessons with Mamma.'

So Miss Faunce opened the door of the green parlour, a room that, though kept spotlessly clean, swept and dusted, had been long since shut up and disused. The slatted dark-green shutters were closed now and the strong last sunlight beating on them filled the room with a subdued glow, almost as if it were under water.

The walls were painted an old-fashioned, dull green; the carpet was green and so were the rich curtains, the damask covered chairs. Everything was the same as it had been when Martha and Kezia used to have their lessons there with their mother.

There was the desk at which they had worked, the piano at which they had practised, and on the walls still hung some of the water-colours of moss roses, birds' eggs in nests, and white rabbits which they had drawn and painted together.

The room smelt slightly of musk and Miss Kezia, whose mind was not working very alertly and who felt some vagueness over all her senses, thought:

'I must have the shutters opened tomorrow and a little sun and air let in. I had forgotten quite how long it was since the room was used.'

And then she saw Martha standing up close against an inner door, looking at her over her shoulder, holding rather stiffly in both hands, a large bouquet of crimson roses, exactly as she had held them in the poster which Miss Kezia had seen the day she drove to the railway station in Paris.

'Martha,' said Miss Faunce stiffly, 'so you've come home at last. To give me the bouquet?'

Still smiling and still without speaking, Mme. Marcelle Lesarge's delicately gloved hands held out the crimson bouquet.

Kezia Faunce took it, and as she did so all the roses turned to blood and emptied themselves into her bosom.

III

Miss Kezia Faunce was found dead in the green parlour where she and her twin sister Martha so often had lessons with their mother. She had fallen, and her head had struck the harp, an instrument that she used, in her girlhood, to play very well.

She had been dead several hours when she was found. The doctor said that her heart had always been weaker than he dared to tell her. She had, of late, been wearing herself out with good work and had been labouring in the kitchen on that particular day. She might have fallen, when unconscious, and killed herself by the blow given her by the harp.

There was no mystery about the affair and not much mourning.

Sarah, the kitchen-maid, did not dare to tell anyone about the lady who had come to the kitchen door with the bouquet. She feared that she would get into severe trouble for an untruthful romancing girl.

IV

Mme. Marcelle Lesarge died in the same hour precisely as her twin sister, but not in so agreeable a manner.

She had lately become rather desperate in her choice of admirers, and on that September evening she had taken home to her apartments a worthless young rake who for some while had been flattering her.

What passed between them on this particular evening no one would ever exactly know, though it was not difficult to guess, for in the morning she was found murdered, her room robbed and rifled, all her jewellery stolen, and nothing left but the large bouquet of crimson roses, which were found flung down carelessly on her bosom, profaned, drooping, and dappled with her blood.

 

2.—MADAM SPITFIRE

A roofless house in the middle of a grove of firs, always in shade from the blue-black foliage, and further darkened by a huge cypress. Who planted this sombre, exotic tree so near a mansion of austere grey stone? One of gloomy tastes, surely; perhaps, in a mood of heartbroken penitence, some wrongdoer brought a long jade-coloured cone from the Holy Land in his pocket and dropped it in this lonely place when, suddenly, the devils he had not been able to placate, sprang up and pursued him through the haunted wood.

Roofless is this bluish granite mansion; from the broken hearth-stones stinging-nettles grow thickly, and in the fallen doorway is an ash sapling, that ill-omened tree; the window-spaces all open on to the darkness of the trees; even from the top of the tower (more ancient, more stoutly built than the house) up to which you may still mount by worn steps, weeds sprout in every crack of stone, there is no prospect only the upper branches of the firs, the flat boughs of the cypress, and the pale sky between appears very lonely, very far away.

This was the jointure house; the vast mansion to which it was attached has disappeared; only a sloping smoothness in the turf of the deserted park shows where the terraced lawns sloped down to the artificial lake; only a broken row of ancient chestnut trees shows where a grandiose avenue led to lordly portals of stone and iron.

Many widowed women lived and died in the jointure house, retiring there after handing over their keys to a son's or an heir's wife; but there came a time when it was shut up and another dower house was built on the other side of the spacious grounds.

This was because of Madam Spitfire; no one (they say) cared to live in the old one after her; the house was avoided, it fell into decay; even when the great mansion was pulled down later for building materials the old jointure house was left alone...not that it had any reputation of ghost or goblin; it was simply ignored. By then the tale of Madam Spitfire had worn thin, to a mere pale tradition; now it is nearly forgotten altogether.

No one knows where she is buried; some say it is under the rank patch of nettles on the broken hearth at which she used to sit; some that it is under the heap of bricks and stone where the old Mausoleum once stood; at least it is certain that she does not rest among her husband's kin in the solitary little church on the edge of the estate, which stands among white grave-stones like an old shepherd among a crowding flock.

I do not know when she lived, and if I did I would not care to give this story dates; it is simply a long time ago; the colours in it are faded like the yarns in an old needlework piece which have changed to a uniform mignonette green and indigo blue with here and there the dim russet of a fox, a pard, an acorn.

Why am I impelled to relate the tale of Madam Spitfire? Why does it come to me with such poignant clarity as I linger within the four walls of the old jointure house and watch the rays of light cut through the cypress boughs and show on the old dark stone where the tenacious ivy clings with threadlike tendrils and glossy leaves?

Madam Spitfire was married when she was not so very young; she came in her full pride to the proud Hall in the great park and everything was refurnished for her reception; the Squire was very much in love with her and—'under her thumb' as his people said.

From the first there was hostile talk; neither her family nor her past was known; some cried her down as a foreigner or even a play actress, but nothing could be proved, and she was well enough bred.

Yet almost at once her sharp ways with the servants and tenants gained her the name of Madam Spitfire; she was soon hated by her inferiors, and few of her equals came to the vast mansion whilst she ruled there; she stood between her husband and all his old friends and ways. He was a very good-natured man and spared no expense to keep his wife in a pleasant mood; she was costly in everything; I can see her going to church in a coach new gilt, wearing a cherry-coloured satin that flares impudently against the sober, lordly pew.

Two people beside her weak husband concerned Madam Spitfire. One was a young woman named Agnes who occupied a sad enough place in the opulent household; a dependent but not a servant; subject to all the insolence and caprice of a mistress, but unpaid and unable to leave if tyranny became intolerable. It was believed she was the Squire's daughter, but he never acknowledged this, though he endeavoured to be kind to her in a secret feeble fashion. It certainly appeared, at least, that she was an orphan, helpless, alone, entirely at the mercy of those on whose charity she existed; she was pretty and gentle and happy enough in a thoughtless fashion; her character was weak, and she was uneducated save in household work.

The other personage who concerned Madam Spitfire was Mr Jenniston, the steward; though he was agreeable with all, he was suspected of underhand villainies; he was middle aged, ugly, elegant, and did what he would with his master. Abroad, he affected to deplore the harsh temper, the greedy extravagance of Madam Spitfire, but it was believed that they understood each other very well.

You may believe that this passionate woman's intense hope was to have children, to have an heir to secure her position and assure her future. She remained barren and that sharpened her fiery disposition; she conceived such a hatred for the heir-at-law, Mr William Garnet, her husband's nephew, that he never dared visit the Hall; the spiteful servants watched her closely, for they thought that she would not hesitate to introduce a false child as her own, if she had the least opportunity.

If she were indeed waiting for such a chance the more horrible must have been her disappointment when her husband was one day brought in dying from a hunting accident.

Her face was frightful to see as she ran into the painted chamber where they had laid him; the girl Agnes was on her knees by his side; the western sun poured through the huge window and showed her white dress, her misery, her piteous, childish fear.

'Remember,' slowly whispered the dying man, 'to keep very carefully what I gave you, Agnes.'

Madam Spitfire snatched the girl aside and stared down at her husband; the last sunlight tinged with red the yellow ribbons in her hair.

'I'm done for,' he murmured; a smile of apology spread over his fat white face.

'I'll never forgive you!' she cried furiously.

The bystanders, in horror, drew her out of the room; Agnes crept back to the couch, crying and wringing her hands.

Well, that was the end of the reign of the proud, selfish woman; she was then Madam Dowager and must go to the jointure house; she was not poor; her marriage settlements were generous enough—but to be a childless widow in the Dower House, while another ruled at the Hall, you may guess what that meant to this fierce creature.

The day of the funeral she called to her side the trembling Agnes.

'What was it my husband told you to keep so carefully?'

'A bond, madam. For a thousand pounds, payable when I am of age.' Seeing the other's look of fury, the weeping girl added: 'It is my sole fortune, madam!'

'And a very fine fortune, too, for a nameless charity brat like yourself! But you are only eighteen; who is to look after you, feed and clothe a lazy, stupid chit like you?'

'Indeed, I don't know. But Mr Barton' (she named the clergyman of the parish) 'said he would perhaps take me in—'

'That don't suit me.