I say, isn’t he very late? I bet you a fiver he’s run off with the pretty new nurse.”

Mrs. Oates snorted.

“If she’s like the last, she’d have to hold his nose, to get him to kiss her… . Are you really going to sit with Lady Warren, miss?”

“I am going to ask if I may,” replied Helen.

“Then, take my warning, and be on the watch out against her. It’s my belief she’s not as helpless as they make out, by a long way. I’m sure she can walk, same as me. She’s got something up her sleeve. Besides, have you heard her voice, when she forgets?” Helen suddenly remembered the bass bellow from the sick room. Here was a situation choked with mystery and drama. In her eagerness to be in the thick of it she almost ran to the door.

“I’ve tied up the window,” she said. “Now, we’re safely locked up, for the night.”

CHAPTER V

THE BLUE ROOM

 

As Helen mounted the stairs to the blue room, she felt an odd stir of expectancy. It took her back to childish days, when she neglected her toys in favor of an invisible companion—Mr. Poke.

Although she played by herself for hours, in a corner of the communal sitting room, it was plain to her parents, that she was not indulging in a solitary game. She did everything with a partner.

And at twilight, when the firelight sent tall shadows flickering on the walls, she carried on an interminable conversation with her hero.

At first, her mother disliked the uncanny element in the society affected by her small daughter; but when she realized that Helen had discovered the best and cheapest of playfellows—imagination—she accepted the wonderful Mr. Poke and used to ask questions about his prowess, to which there was no limit.

The staircase was lit by a pendant globe, which swung from a beam which spanned the central well. The first floor was between this light and the illumination from the hall, so that the landing was rather dark. Facing the fligh of stairs, was an enormous ten-foot mirror, framed in tarnished gilt carving, and supported by a marble console table.

As Helen approached it, her reflection came to meet her, so that a small white face rose up from the dim depths of the glass, like a corpse emerging from deep lake-water, on the seventh day.

The thrill which ran through her veins, in response, seemed to her, an omen. Miss Warren came to the door, in answer to her knock. Her pale face looked dragged and devitalized after hours of imprisonment with her step-mother.

“Has the new nurse come?” she asked.

“No.” Helen was aggressively cheerful. “And we don’t expect her for hours and hours. Mrs. Oates says the rain has made the hills difficult for the car.”

“Quite,” agreed Miss Warren wearily. “Please let me know directly she arrives. She must relieve me as soon as she has had something to eat.”

It was Helen’s chance-and she took it.

“Might I sit with Lady Warren?” she asked.

Miss Warren hesitated before her reply. She knew that it would be against her brother’s wish to entrust Lady Warren to an untrained stranger; but the girl seemed reliant and conscientious.

“Thank you, Miss Capel,” she replied. “It would be kind. Lady Warren is asleep, so you will only have to sit very still, and watch her.”

She crossed the landing to her own room, and then turned to give further advice.

“If she wakes and wants something you can’t find—or if you are in any difficulty, come, at once, to me.”

Helen promised, even while she was conscious that she would appeal to Miss Warren only as a last resource. She meant to cope with any situation on her own initiative, and she hoped that the need would arise.

The tide of her curiosity was running strongly when, at long last, she entered the blue room. It was a huge, handsome apartment, furnished with a massive mahogany suite, made sombre by reason of the prevailing dark blue color of the walls, carpet and curtains. A dull red fire glowed in the steel grate. Although its closeness was mitigated with lavender-water, the atmosphere smelt faintly of rotten apples..