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Updated: June 15, 2025
The story of Mr Sharnall's mental illusions, and particularly of the hallucination as to someone following him, had left an unpleasant impression on Westray's mind. He was anxious about his fellow-lodger, and endeavoured to keep a kindly supervision over him, as he felt it to be possible that a person in such a state might do himself a mischief.
"There is Mr Westray's letter," she said, "if you would care to read it," and passed over to Miss Joliffe the piece of white paper on which a man had staked his fate.
I was always frightened as a boy at the very darkness in the spaces between the buttresses, and I have never got over it. I used to think that devils and hobgoblins lurked in those cavernous depths, and now I fancy evil men may be hiding in the blackness, all ready to spring out and strangle one. It is a lonely place, this old wharf, and after nightfall " He broke off, and clutched Westray's arm.
It was the middle bar that Sophia had turned into a caterpillar, and in pure wantonness left showing through, when for her own purposes she had painted out the rest of the picture. Westray's excitement was getting the better of him he could not keep still; he stood first on one leg and then on another, and drummed on the table with his fingers. The dealer put his hand on the architect's arm.
What right had he to advise before he knew whether she would listen to him? What were these dangers to which she was even now exposed, and from which Mr Westray was to shield her? She asked herself the question formally, though she knew the answer all the while. Her own heart had told her enough of late, to remove all difficulty in reading between Mr Westray's lines.
"For God's sake keep quiet!" he said; "don't excite yourself. You needn't think you have found a gold mine. It ain't a ten thousand-guinea Vandyke. We can't see enough yet to say what it is, but I'll bet my life you never get a twenty-pound note for it." But for all Westray's impatience, the afternoon was well advanced before the head of the portrait was approached.
She blushed because Westray's tone was too off-handed and easy towards so important a personage to please her critical mood; and then she blushed again at her own folly in blushing. The front-door shut at last, and the gaslight fell on Lord Blandamer's active figure and straight, square shoulders as he went down the steps.
Why was he not at hand when Lord Blandamer wanted him? Where was he? And in a moment Westray's name was on all lips. And just then was heard a voice from the tower, calling out through the louvres of the belfry windows, very clear and distinct for all it was so high up, and for all the chatter of the jackdaws. It was Westray's voice: "I am shut up in the belfry," it called; "the door is jammed.
She betook herself to the room that had once been Mr Sharnall's, but was now distressingly empty and forlorn, and there finding writing materials, sat down to compose an answer to Westray's letter.
It seemed as if the tower had come to rest again, but Westray's scruples were not so easily allayed this time, and he took measures for pushing forward the under-pinning of the south-east pier with all possible despatch. That inclination or predilection of Westray's for Anastasia, which he had been able to persuade himself was love, had passed away.
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