Classic Audiobook Collection - The Grey Woman by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell ~ Full Audiobook [thriller]

Episode Date: October 13, 2022

The Grey Woman by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell audiobook. Genre: thriller Presented as a found manuscript passed from hand to hand, The Grey Woman draws you into a hushed confession of fear, courage, and reinvention. In a small German town, the gentle Anna Scherer is courted into an elegant marriage that promises security and sophistication. But behind the fine house, the polished manners, and the glitter of high society, Anna begins to sense a deeper menace in her husband and the circle that surrounds him. When scattered clues harden into certainty, Anna finds an unexpected ally in Amante, a sharp-eyed servant whose loyalty is matched only by her practical daring. Together they attempt what seems impossible: to break free from a powerful man who does not intend to be refused, and from a past that can track them across borders. As Anna is forced into secrecy and disguise, every knock at the door becomes a test of nerve, and every new refuge carries the question of who can be trusted. Elizabeth Gaskell blends Gothic atmosphere with psychological realism, exploring coercion, survival, and the price of reclaiming your own name. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:37:49) Chapter 02 (01:25:42) Chapter 03 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

the gray woman by elizabeth clycorn gaskell portion one there is a mill by the neckar side to which many people resort for coffee according to the fashion which is almost national in germany there is nothing particularly attractive in the situation of this mill it is on the manheim the flat and unromantic side of heidelberg the river turns the mill-wheel with a plenteous gushing sound the outbuildings and the dwelling-house of the miller form a well-kept dusty quadrangle again further from the river, there is a garden full of willows and arbors and flower beds not well kept, but very profuse in flowers and luxuriant creepers, knotting and looping the arbors together. In each of these arbors is a stationary table of white-painted wood and light-movable chairs of the same color and material. I went to drink coffee there with some friends in 1840. The stately old miller came out to greet us, as some of the party were known to him of old. He was of a grand build of a man, and his loud,

musical voice with its tone, friendly and familiar, his rolling laugh of welcome went well with a keen bright eye, the fine cloth of his coat, and the general look of substance about the place. Poultry of all kinds abounded in the mill yard, where there were ample means of livelihood for them strewed on the ground, but not content with this, the miller took out handfuls of corn from the sacks and throok and hens that ran almost under his feet in their eagerness, and all the time he was doing this, as it were habitually, he was talking to us, and ever and anon calling to his daughter and the serving maids to bid them hasten the coffee we had ordered. He followed us to an arbor, and saw us serve to his satisfaction with the best of everything we could ask for,

and then left us to go round to the different arbors and see that each party was properly attended to. And as he went, this great, prosperous, happy-looking man whistled softly, one of the most plaintive heirs I ever heard. His family have held this mill ever since the old palatinate days, or rather, I should say, have possessed the ground ever since then, for two successive mills of theirs have been burnt down by the French. If you want to see Scherer in a passion, just talk to him of the possibility of a French invasion. This moment, still whistling that mournful air, we saw the miller going down the steps that led from the somewhat raised garden into the mill yard, and so I seemed to have lost my chance.

of putting him in a passion. We had nearly finished our coffee and our kukun and our cinnamon cake, when heavy splashes fell on our thick, leafy covering, quicker and quicker they came, coming through the tender leaves as if they were tearing them asunder. All the people in the garden were hurrying under shelter or seeking for their carriages standing outside. Up the steps, the miller came hastening with a crimson umbrella, fit to cover everyone left in the garden, and followed by his daughter and one or two maidens each bearing an umbrella. Come into the house, come in, I say, it is a summer storm and will flood the place for an hour or two till the river carries it away. Here, here! And we followed him back into his own house. We went into the kitchen first.

Such an array of bright copper and tin vessels I never saw, and all the wooden things were as thoroughly scoured. The red tile floor was spotless when we went in, but in two minutes it was all over slop and dirt with the tread of many feet. But the kitchen was filled, and still the worthy miller kept bringing in more people under his great-grateful. crimson umbrella. He even called the dogs in and made them lie down under the tables. His daughter said something to him in German, and he shook his head merrily at her. Everybody laughed. What did she say? I asked. She told him to bring the ducks in next. But indeed, if more people come, we shall be suffocated. What with the thundry weather and the

stove and all these steaming clothes? I really think we must ask leave to pass on. Perhaps we might go in and see Frau Scherer. My friend asked the daughter of the house for permission to go into an inner chamber and see her mother. It was granted, and we went into a sort of saloon overlooking the Nekar, very small, very bright, and very close. The floor was slippery with polish, long, narrow pieces of looking glass against the walls reflected the perpetual motion of the river opposite. A white porcelain stove with some old-fashioned ornaments of brass about it, a sofa covered with Utrecht velvet, a table before it, and a piece of worsted worked carpet under it, a vase of artificial flowers, and, lastly, an alcove with a bed in it, on which lay the

paralyzed wife of the Goodmiller, knitting busily, formed the furniture. I spoke as if this was all that was to be seen in the room, but, sitting quietly, while my friend kept up a brisk conversation in a language which I but half understood, my eye was caught by a picture in a dark corner of the room, and I got up to examine it more nearly. It was that of a young girl of extreme beauty, evidently of middle rank. There was a sensitive refinement in her face, as if she almost shrank from the gaze which, of necessity, the painter must have fixed upon her. It was not over well-painted, but I felt that it must have been a good likeness from this strong impress of peculiar character which I have tried to describe. From the dress, I should guess it to have been painted in the latter

half of the last century, and I afterwards heard that I was right. There was a little pause in the conversation. Will you ask Frau Scherer, who this is? My friend repeated my question and received a long reply in German, then she turned round and translated it to me. It is the likeness of a great aunt of her husbands. My friend was standing by me and looking at the picture with sympathetic curiosity. See, here is the name on the open page of this Bible, Anna Schererer, 1778. frau shei says there is a tradition in the family that this pretty girl with her complexion of lilies and roses lost her color so entirely through fright that she was known by the name of the gray woman she speaks as if this anna sherri had lived in some state of life-long terror but she does not know details refers me to her husband for them she thinks he has some papers which were written by the original of that picture for her daughter who died in this very house not long after our friend there was married We can ask Herr Scherer for the whole story if you like.

Oh, yes, pray do, said I. And as our host came in at this moment to ask how we were ferrying, and to tell us that he had sent to Heidelberg for carriages to convey us home, seeing no chance of the heavy rain abating, my friend, after thanking him, passed on to my request. Ah, said he, his face-changing. The Aunt Anna had a sad history. It was all owing to one of those hellish friend-es.

and her daughter suffered for it. The cousin Ursula, as we all called her when I was a child. To be sure, the good cousin Ursula was his child as well. The sins of the fathers are visited on their children. The lady would like to know all about it, would she? Well, there are papers, a kind of apology the Aunt Anna wrote for putting an end to her daughter's engagement, or rather facts which she revealed that prevented cousin Ursula from marrying the man she loved. and so she would never have any other good fellow, else I have heard say my father would have been thankful to have made her his wife. All this time he was rummaging in the drawer of an old-fashioned bureau, and now he turned round with a bundle of yellow manuscript in his hand,

which he gave to my friend saying, Take it home, take it home, and if you care to make out our crabbed German writing, you may keep it as long as you like and read it at your leisure. Only I must have it back again when you have done with it. That's all. and so we became possessed of the manuscript of the following letter which it was our employment during many a long evening that ensuing winter to translate and in some parts to abbreviate the letter began with some reference to the pain which she had already afflicted upon her daughter by some unexplained opposition to a project of marriage but i doubt if without the clue with which the good miller had furnished us we could have made out even this much from the passionate broken sentences that made us fancy that some seem between the mother and daughter, and possibly a third person,

had occurred just before the mother had begun to write. Thou dost not love thy child, mother. Thou dost not care if her heart is broken. Ah, God! And those words of my beloved Ursula ring in my ears as if the sound of them would fill them when I lay a dying, and her poor tear-stained face comes between me and everything else. Child! Hearts do not break.

life is very tough as well as very terrible but i will not decide for thee i will tell thee all and thou shalt bear the burden of choice i may be wrong i have little wit left and never had much i think but an instinct serves me in place of judgment and that instinct tells me that thou and thy henry must never be buried yet i may be in error i would fain make my child happy lay this paper before the good priest schreisheim if, after reading it, thou hast doubts which make thee uncertain, only I will tell thee all now, unconditioned that no spoken word ever passes between us on the subject. It would kill me to be questioned. I should have to see all present again. My father held, as thou knowest, the mill on the neckar, where thy new-found uncle Cherrer now lives. Thou rememberest the surprise with which we were received their last vintage twelvemonth, how thy uncle disbelieved me when i said i was his sister anna whom he had long believed to be dead and how i had to lead thee underneath the picture painted of me long ago and point out feature by feature the likeness between it and thee and how as i spoke i recalled first to my own mind

and then by speech to his the details of the time when it was painted the merry words that passed between us then a happy boy and girl position of the articles of furniture in the room our father's habits the cherry-tree now cut down that shaded the window of my bedroom through which my brother was wont to squeeze himself in order to spring on to the topmost bow that would bear his weight and thence would pass me back his cap laden with fruit to where i sat on this window-sill too sick with fright for him to care much for eating the cherries and at length fritz gave way and believed me to be his sister anna even as though i were risen from the dead and thou rememberest how he fetched in his wife and told her that i was not dead that was come back to the old house once more changed as i was and she would scarce believe him and scanned me with a cold distrustful eye till at length for i knew her of old as babetta muller i said i was well to do, and needed not to seek out friends for what they had to give. And then she asked, not me, but her husband, why I had kept silence so long, leading all, father, brother, everyone

that loved me in my own dear home, twas te'est me dead, and then thine uncle, thou rememberest, said he cared not to know more than I cared to tell, that I was his Anna, found again to be a blessing to him in as old age as I had been in his boyhood. I thanked him in my heart for his trust, for were the need for telling all less than it seems to me now I could not speak of my past life. But she, who was my sister-in-law still, held back her welcome, and, for want of that, I did not go to live in Heidelberg as I had planned beforehand in order to be near my brother Fritz, but contented myself with his promise to be a father to my Ursula when I should die and leave this weary world. That Babata Moulur was, as I may say,

the cause of all my life's suffering. She was a baker's daughter in Heidelberg, a great beauty, as people said, and indeed, as I could see for myself, I too, thou saw'st my picture, was reckoned a beauty, and I believe I was so. Babetta Muler looked upon me as a rival, she liked to be admired, and had no one much to love her. I had several people to love me, thy grandfather, Fritz, the old servant, Katyn, Carl, the head of printance at the mill, and I feared admiration and notice, and the being stared at as the Schoen-Mullerun whenever I went to make my purchase in Heidelberg. Those were happy, peaceful days. I had Katian to help me in the housework, and whatever we did pleased my brave old father, who was always gentle

and indulgent towards us women, though he was stern enough with the apprentices in the mill. Carl, the oldest of these, was his favorite, and I can see now that my father wished him to marry me, and the Carl himself was desirous to do so. But Carl was rough-spoken and passionate, not with me, but with the others, and I shrank from him in a way which I fear gave him pain, and then came thy uncle Fritz's marriage, and Babetta was brought to the mill to be its mistress. not that i cared much for giving up my post for in spite of my father's great kindness i always feared that i did not manage well for so large a family with the man and a girl under cation we sat down eleven each night to supper but when babetta began to find fault with cation i was unhappy at the blame that fell on faithful servants and by and by i began to see that babetta was egging on carl to make more open love to me and as she once said to get done with it and take me off to to a home of my own. My father was growing old and did not perceive all my daily discomfort.

The more Carl advanced, the more I disliked him. He was good in the main, but I had no notion of being married and could not bear anyone who talked to me about it. Things were in this way when I had an invitation to go to Carl's rue to visit a schoolfellow of whom I had been very fond. Babetta was all for my going. I don't think I wanted to leave home, and yet I had been very fond of Sophie Ruprecht, but I was always shy among strangers. Somehow the affair was faddled for me, but not until both Fritz and my father had made inquiries as to the character and position of the Ruprex. They learned that the father had held some kind of inferior position about the Grand Duke's court, and was now dead, leaving a widow, a noble lady, and two daughters, the elder of whom

was Sophie, my friend. Madame Ruprecht was not rich, but more than respectable, genteel. When this was ascertained, my father made no opposition to my going. Babetta forwarded it by all the means in her power, and even my dear Fritz had his word to say at its favor. Only Katian was against it. Katian and Karl. The opposition of Carl did more to send me to Karl's rue than anything, for I could have objected to go, but when he took upon himself to ask what was the good of going aghating, visiting strangers of whom no one knew anything, I yielded to circumstances, to the pulling of Sophie and the pushing of Babetta. I was silently vexed, I remember, at Babetta's inspection of my clothes,

at the way in which she settled that this gown was too old-fashioned, or that too common, to go with me on my visit to a noble lady, and at the way in which she took upon herself to spend the money my father had given me to buy what was requisite for the occasion. And yet I blamed myself, for everyone else thought her so kind for doing all this, and she herself meant kindly too. At last I quitted the mill by the Nekar side. It was a long day's journey, and Fritz went with me to Karl's Rue. The Ruprecks lived on the third floor of a house a little behind one of the principal streets in a cramped up court, to which we gained admittance through a doorway in the street. I remember how pinched their rooms looked after the large space we had at the mill, and yet they

had an air of grandeur about them which was new to me and which gave me pleasure faded as some of it was madame rupert was too formal a lady for me i was never at my ease with her but sophy was all that i had recollected her at school kind affectionate and only rather too ready with her expressions of admiration and regard the little sister kept out of our way and that was all we needed in the first enthusiastic renewal of our early friendship the one great object of Madame Ruprek's life was to retain her position in society, and as her means were much diminished since her husband's death, it was not much comfort, though there was a great deal of show in their way of living, just the opposite of what it was at my father's house. I believe that my coming was not too much desired by Madame Ruprecht, as I brought with me another mouth to be fed. But Sophie had spent a year or more an entreating for permission to invite me, and her mother, having once consented, was too well-bred not to give me a stately welcome. The life in Karl's Rue was very different from what it was at home.

The hours were later, the coffee was weaker in the morning, the pottage was weaker, the boiled beef less relieved by other diet. The dress is finer, the evening engagements constant. I did not find these visits pleasant. We might not knit, which would have relieved the tedium a little, but we sat in a circle, talking together, only interrupted occasionally by a gentleman who, breaking out of the knot of men who stood near the door, talking eagerly together, stole across the room on tiptoe, his hat under his arm, and bringing his

feet together in the position we called the first at the dancing school, made a low bow to the lady he was going to address. The first time I saw these manners, I could not help smiling, but Madame Ruprecht saw me, and spoke to me next morning rather severely, telling me that, of course, in my country breeding, I could have seen nothing of court manners or French fashions, but that that was no reason for my laughing at them. Of course, I tried never to smile again in company. This visit to Carls Rue took place in 89, just when everyone was full of the events taking place at Paris. And yet at Carls Rue, French fashions were more talk of than French politics. Madame Ruprecht especially thought a great deal of all French people. And this again was quite

different to us at home. Fritz could hardly bear the name of a Frenchman, and it had nearly been an obstacle to my visit to Sophie that her mother preferred being called Madame to her proper title of Frou. One night I was sitting next to Sophie and longing for the time when we might have supper and go home, so as to be able to speak together, a thing forbidden by Madame Ruprex Rules of Etiquette, which strictly prohibited any but the most necessary conversation passing between members of the same family when in society. I was sitting, I say, scarcely keeping back my inclination to yawn when two gentlemen came in, one of whom was evidently a stranger to the whole party from the formal manner in which the host led him up and presented him to the hostess.

I thought I had never seen anyone so handsome or so elegant. His hair was powdered, of course, but one could see from his complexion that it was fair in its natural state. His features were as delicate as girls, and set off by two little mushes as we called patches in those days, one at the left corner of his mouth, the other prolonging as it were the right eye. His dress was blue and silver. I was so lost in admiration of this beautiful young man that I was as much surprised as if the angel Gabriel had spoken to me when the lady of the house brought him forward to present him to me. She called him Monsieur de la Torreille. he began to speak to me in French. But though I understood him perfectly, I dared not trust

myself to reply to him in that language. Then he tried German, speaking it with a kind of soft lisp that I thought charming. But before the end of the evening, I became a little tired of the affected softness and effeminacy of his manners, and the exaggerated compliments he paid me, which had the effect of making all the company turn round and look at me. Madame Ruprecht was, however, pleased with the precise thing that displeased me she liked either sophie or me to create a sensation of course she would have preferred that it should have been her daughter but her daughter's friend was next best as we went away i heard madame rupert and monsieur de la turrell reciprocating civil speeches with might and main from which i found out that the french gentleman was coming to call on us the next day i do not know whether i was more glad or frightened for i had been kept upon still of good manners all the evening. But still I was flattered when Madame Ruprecht spoke as if she had invited him, because he had shown pleasure in my society, and even more gratified by Sophie's

ungrudging delight at the evident interest I had excited in so fine and agreeable a gentleman. Yet, with all this, they had hard work to keep me from running out of the salon the next day when we heard his voice inquiring at the gate on the stairs from Madame Ruprecht. they had made me put on my sunday gown and they themselves were dressed as for a reception when he was gone away madame rupert congratulated me on the conquest i had made for indeed he had scarcely spoken to any one else beyond what mere civility required and had almost invited himself to come in the evening to bring some new song which was all the fashion in paris he said madame rupert had been out all morning as she told me to glean information about monsieur de la he was a proprietor had a small chateau on the vaugers mountains he owned land there but had a large income from some sources quite independent of this property altogether he was a good match as she emphatically observed she never seemed to think that i could refuse him after this account of his wealth nor do i believe she would have allowed sophia a choice even had he been as old and ugly as he was young and handsome i do not quite know so many events have come to pass since then and blurred the clearness of my recollections if i loved him or not he was very much devoted to me he almost frightened me by the excess of his demonstrations of love

and he was very charming to everybody around me who all spoke of him as the most fascinating of men and of me as the most fortunate of girls and yet i never felt quite at my ease with him i was always relieved when his visits were over although i missed his presence when he did not come he prolonged his visit to the friend with whom he was staying at carol's rue on purpose to woo me he loaded me with presents which i was unwilling to take only madame rupert seemed to consider me an effective prude if i refused them many of these presents consisted of articles of valuable old jewelry evidently belonging to his family by accepting these i doubled the ties which were formed around me by circumstances even more than by my own consent in those days we did not write letters to absent friends as frequently as is done now and i had been unwilling to name him in the few letters that i wrote home at length however i learned from madame rupert that she had written to my father to announce the splendid conquest i had made and to request his presence at my betrothal I started with astonishment. I had not realized that affairs had gone so far as this. But when she asked me, in a stern, offended manner, what I had meant by my conduct, if I did not intend to marry Monsieur de la Torreille, I had received his visits, his presence, all his various advances, without showing any unwillingness or repugnance.

And it was all true. I had shown no repugnance, though I did not wish to be married to him, at least not so soon what could i do but hang my head and silently consent to the rapid enunciation of the only course which now remained for me if i would not be esteemed a heartless coquette by all the rest of my days there was some difficulty which i afterwards learnt that my sister-in-law had obviated about my betrothal taking place from home my father and fritz especially were for having me return to the mill and there be betrothed and from thence be married but the rupex of monsieur de la torrelle were equally urgent on the other side and babetta was unwilling to have the trouble of the commotion at the mill and also i think a little dislike the idea of the contrast of my grander marriage with her own so my father and fritz came over to the betrothal they were to stay at an inn in carroll's roof for a fortnight at the end of which time the marriage was to take place monsieur de la torrelle told me he had business at home which would oblige him to be absent during the interval between the two events and i was very glad of it for i did not think that he valued my father and my brother as i could have wished him to do he was very polite to them put on all the soft grand manner which he had rather dropped with me and complimented us all round beginning with my father and madame rupert and ending with little alvina but he a little scoffed at the old-fashioned church ceremonies which my father insisted on and i fancy fritz must have taken some of his compliments as satire for i saw certain signs of manner by which i knew that my future husband for all his civil words had irritated and annoyed my brother

but all the money arrangements were liberal in the extreme and more than satisfied almost surprised my father even fritz lifted up his eyebrows and whistled i alone did not care about anything i was bewitched in a dream a kind of despair i had got into a net through my own timidity and weakness and i did not see how to get out of it i clung to my own home people that fortnight as i had never done before their voices their ways were all so pleasant and familiar to me after the constraint in which i had been living i might speak and do as i liked without being corrected by madame rupert or reproved in a delicate complimentary way by monsieur delaterale one day i said to my father that i did not that i would rather go back to the dear old mill but he seemed to feel the speech of mine as a dereliction of duty as great as if i had committed perjury as if after the ceremony of betrothal no one had any right over me but my future husband and yet he asked me some solemn questions but my answers were not such as to do me any good. Dost thou know any fault or crime in this man that should prevent God's blessing from resting on thy marriage with him? Dest thou feel aversion or repugnance to him in any way?

And to all this, what could I say? I could only stammer out that I did not think I loved him enough. And my poor old father saw in this reluctance only the fancy of a silly girl who did not know her own mind, but who had now gone too far to recede. so we were married in the court chapel a privilege which madame rupert had used no end of efforts to obtain for us and which she must have thought was to secure us all possible happiness both at the time and in recollection afterwards we were married and after two days spent in festivity at caros rue among all our new fashionable friends there i bade good-bye for ever to my dear old father

i had begged my husband to take me by way of heidelberg to his old castle in the vorge but i found an amount of determination under that effeminate appearance and manner for which i was not prepared and he refused my first request so decidedly that i dared not urge it henceforth anna said he you will move in a different sphere of life and though it is possible that you may have the power of showing favor to your relations from time to time yet much or familiar intercourse will be undesirable and is what i cannot allow i felt almost afraid after this formal speech of asking my father and fritz to come and see me but when the agony of bidding them farewell overcame all my prudence i did beg them to pay me a visit ere long but they shook their heads and spoke of business at home, of different kinds of life, of my being a French woman now. Only my father broke out at last with a blessing and said, If my child is unhappy, which God forbid, let her remember that her father's house is ever open to her. I was on the point of crying out, oh, take me back then now, my father, oh, my father! When I felt, rather than saw, my husband present near me,

he looked on with a slightly contemptuous air, and taking my hand in his, he led me weeping away saying that short farewells were always the best when they were inevitable it took us two days to reach a chateau in the vosh for the roads were bad and the way difficult to ascertain nothing could be more devoted than he was all the time of the journey it seemed as if he were trying in every way to make up for the separation which every hour made me feel the more complete between my present and my former life i seemed as if i were only now wakening up to a full sense of what marriage was and i dare say i was not a cheerful companion on the tedious journey at length jealousy of my regret for my father and brother got the better of m de la torrelle and he became so much displeased with me that i thought my heart would break with the sense of desolation so it was in no cheerful frame of mind that we approached le roche and i thought that perhaps it was because i was so unhappy that the place looked so dreary on one side the chateau looked like a raw new building hastily run up for some immediate purpose without any growth of trees or underwood near it only the remains of the stone used for the building not yet cleared away from the immediate neighborhood although weeds and lichens had been suffered to grow near and over the heaps of rubbish on the other with the great rock from which the place took its name, and rising close against them, as if almost a natural formation, was the old castle, whose building dated many centuries back. It was not large, nor grand,

but it was strong and picturesque, and I used to wish that we lived in it rather than in the smart, half-furnished apartment in the new edifice, which had been hastily got ready for my reception. Incongruous, as the two parts were, they were joined into a hole by means of intricate passages and unexpected doors, the exact positions of which I never fully understood. Monsieur de la Torrelle led me to a suite of room set apart for me, and formally installed me in them, as in a domain of which I was sovereign. He apologized for the hasty preparation which was all he had been able to make for me, but promised before I asked, or even thought of complaining, that they should be made as luxurious

as heart could wish before many weeks had elapsed. but when in the gloom of an autumnal evening i caught my own face and figure reflected in all the mirrors which showed only a mysterious background in the dim light of the many candles which failed to illuminate the great proportions of the half-furnished salon i clung to monsieur de la turrell and begged to be taken to the rooms he had occupied before his marriage he seemed angry with me although he affected to laugh and so decidedly put aside the notion of my having any other rooms but these that i trembled in silence at the fantastic figures and shapes which my imagination called up as peopling the background of these gloomy mirrors there was my boudoir a little less dreary my bedroom with its grand and tarnished furniture which i commonly made into my sitting-room locking up the various doors which led into the boudoir the salon the passages all but one through which m de la tourel always entered from his own apartments in the older part of the castle but this preference of mine for occupying my bedroom annoyed monsieur de la trelle i am sure though he did not care to express his displeasure he would always allure me back into the salon which i disliked more and more from its complete separation from the rest of the building by the long passage into which all the doors of my apartment opened this passage was closed by heavy doors in portier through which i could not hear a sound from the other parts of the house and of course the servants could not hear any movement or cry of mine unless expressly summoned to a girl brought up as i had been in a household where every individual lived all day in the sight of every other member of the family never wanted either cheerful words or the sense of silent companionship this grand isolation of mine was very formidable and the more so because monsieur de la

as landed proprietor sportsmen and what not was generally out of doors the greater part of every day and sometimes for two or three days at a time i had no pride to keep me from associating with the domestics it would have been natural to me in many ways to have sought them out for a word of sympathy in those dreary days when i was left so entirely to myself had they been like our kindly german servants but i dislike them one in all i could not tell why some were civil but there was a familiarity in their civility which repelled me others were rude and treated me more as if i were an intruder than their master's chosen wife and yet of the two sets i like these last the best the principal male servant belonged to this latter class i was very much afraid of him he had such an air of suspicious surliness about him and all he did for me and yet monsieur de la turrell spoke of him as most valuable and faithful indeed it sometimes struck me that la fale ruled his master in some things and this i could not make out for while m de la torrell behaved towards me as if i were some precious toy or idol to be cherished and fostered and petted and indulged i soon found out how little i or apparently any one else could bend the terrible will of the man who had on first acquaintance appeared too effeminate and languid to exert his will in the slightest particular i had learnt to know his face better now and to see that some vehement depth of feeling the cause of which i could not fathom made his grey eye glitter with pale light and his lips contract and his delicate cheek whiten on certain occasions but all had been so open and above-board at home that i had no experience to help me to unravel any mysteries among those who lived under the same roof i understood that i had made what madame rupert and her set would have called a great marriage because i lived in chateau with many servants

bound ostensibly to obey me as a mistress i understood that monsieur de la torrelle was fond enough of me in his way proud of my beauty i dare say for he often enough spoke about it to me but he was also jealous and suspicious and uninfluenced by my wishes unless they tallied with his own i felt at this time as if i could have been fond of him too if he would have let me but i was timid from my childhood and before long my time my own my dread of his displeasure, coming down like thunder in the midst of his love, for such slight causes as a hesitation in reply, a wrong word, or a sigh for my father, conquered my humorous inclination to love one who was so handsome, so accomplished, so indulgent, and devoted. But if I could not please him when indeed I loved him, you may imagine how often I did wrong when I was so much afraid of him as to quietly avoid his company for fear of his outbursts of passion. One thing I remember noticing, that the more Monsieur de la Torrel was displeased with me,

the more Lefeuve seemed to chuckle, and when I was restored to favor, sometimes on as sudden an impulse as that which occasioned my disgrace, Lefevre would look askance at me with his cold, malicious eyes, and once or twice at such times he spoke most disrespectfully to Monsieur de la Torrelle. I have almost forgotten to say that, in the early days of my life at La Roche, monsieur de la Torrell, in contemptuous indulgent pity at my weakness in disliking the dreary grandeur of the salon, wrote up to the milliner in Paris from whom my corbe di Marage had come, to desire her to look out for me a maid of middle-age, experienced in the toilette, and with so much refinement that she might, on occasion, serve as companion to me.

End of Portion 1 Portion 2 of the Grey Woman. The Grey Woman, by Elizabeth Clegghorn Gaskell, Portion A Norman woman, Amont by name, was sent to La Roche by the Paris Milner, to become my maid. She was tall and handsome, though upwards of forty, and somewhat gaunt. But on first seen her I liked her. She was neither rude nor familiar in her manners, and had a pleasant look of straightforwardness about her that I had missed in all the inhabitants of the chateau,

and had foolishly set down in my own mind as a national blot. Amante was directed by Monsieur de la Torrelle to sit in my boudoir and to be always within call. He also gave her many instructions as to her duties in matters which, perhaps, strictly belonged to my department of management. But I was young and inexperienced and thankful to be spared any responsibility. I dare say it was true what Monsieur de La Torreille said, before many weeks had elapsed, that, for a great lady, a lady of a castle, I became sadly too familiar with my Norman waiting-maid.

But you know that by birth we were not very far apart in rank. Amant was the daughter of a Norman farmer, I of a German miller. And besides that, my life was so lonely. It almost seemed as if I could not please my husband. He had written for someone capable of being my companion at times, and now he was jealous of my free regard for her. Angry because I could sometimes laugh at her original tunes

and amusing proverbs, while when with him I was too much frightened to smile. From time to time, families from a distance of some leagues drove through the bad roads and their heavy carriages to pay us a visit, and there was an occasional talk of our going to Paris when public affairs should be a little more settled. These little events and plans were the only variations in my life for the first twelve months, if I accept the alternations in Monsieur de Laudrelle's temper, his unreasonable anger, and his passionate fondness. perhaps one of the reasons that made me take pleasure and comfort in amant's society was that whereas i was afraid of everybody i do not think i was half as much afraid of things as of persons amont feared no one she would quietly beard la five and he respected her all the more for it she had a knack of putting questions to monsieur de la trelle which respectfully informed him that she had detected the weak point but forbore to press him too closely upon it out of deference to his position as her master. And with all her shrewdness to others, she had quite tender ways with me,

all the more so at this time because she knew, what I had not yet ventured to tell Monsieur de la Torrelle, that by and by I might become a mother, that wonderful object of mysterious interest to single women who no longer hoped to enjoy such blessedness themselves. It was once more autumn, late in October, but I was reconciled to my habitation, the walls of the new part of the building no longer looked bare and desolate the debris had been so far cleared away by monsieur delaturelle's desire as to make me a little flower-garden in which i tried to cultivate those plants that i remembered as growing at home Amont and I had moved the furniture in the rooms and adjusted it to our liking. My husband had ordered many an article from time to time that he thought would give me pleasure, and I was becoming tame to my apparent imprisonment in a certain part of the great building,

the whole of which I had never yet explored. It was October, as I say, once more. The days were lovely, though short in duration, and Monsieur de la Torrelle had occasion, so he said, to go to that distant estate the superintendence of which so frequently took him away from home he took lafave with him and possibly some more of the lackeys he often did and my spirits rose a little at the thought of his absence and then the new sensation that he was the father of my unborn babe came over me and i tried to invest him with this fresh character i tried to believe that it was his passionate love for me that made him so jealous and tyrannical imposing as he did restrictions of his own character and i tried to believe that it was his passionate love for me that made him so jealous and tyrannical imposing as he did restrictions on my very intercourse with my dear father, from whom I was so entirely separated as far as personal intercourse was concerned. I had, it is true, let myself go into a sorrowful review of all the troubles which lay hidden beneath the seeming luxury of my life. I knew that no one cared for me

except my husband and Amman, for it was clear enough to see that I, as his wife, and also as a parvenu, was not popular among the few neighbors who surrounded us. And as for the the servants, the women were all hard and impudent looking, treating me with a semblance of respect that had more of mockery than reality in it, while the men had a lurking kind of fierceness about them, sometimes displayed even to Monsieur deleterrelle, who, on his part, it must be confessed, was often severe even to cruelty in his management of them. My husband loved me, I said to myself, but I said it almost in the form of a question. His love was shown fitfully, and more in ways calculated to please himself than to please me.

I felt that for no wish of mine would he deviate one tittle from any predetermined course of action. I had learnt the inflexibility of those thin, delicate lips. I knew how anger would turn his fair complexion to deadly white and bring the cruel light into his pale eyes. The love I bore to anyone seemed to be a reason for his hating them, and so i went on pitying myself one long dreary afternoon during that absence of his of which i have spoken only sometimes remembering to check myself in my murmurings by thinking of the new unseen link between us and then crying afresh to think how wicked i was oh how well i remember that long october evening amont came in from time to time talking away to cheer me talking about dress in paris and i hardly know what but from time to time looking at me keenly with her friendly dark eyes and with serious interest too though all her words were about frivolity at length she heaped the fire with wood drew the heavy silken curtains close for I had been anxious hitherto to keep them open

so that I might see the pale moon mounting the skies as I used to see her. The same moods rise from behind the Kaiser stool at Heidelberg. The sight made me cry, so Amant shut it out. She dictated to me, as a nurse does to a child.

Now, madame must have the little kitten to keep her company, she said, while I go and ask Martin for a cup of coffee. I remember that speech, and the way it roused. me, for I did not like a monk to think I wanted amusing by a kitten. It might be my petulance, but this speech, such as she might have made to a child, annoyed me, and I said that I had reason for my loneliness of spirits, meaning that they were not so imaginary, a nature that I could be

diverted from them by the gambols of a kitten. So though I did not choose to tell her all, I told her apart, and as I spoke, I began to suspect that the good creature knew much of what I withheld, and that the little speech about the kitten was more thoughtfully kind than it had seemed at first. I said that it was so long since I had heard from my father, that he was an old man, and so many things might happen, I might never see him again, and I so seldom heard from him or my brother. It was a more complete and total separation than I had ever anticipated when I married, and something of my home and my life previous to my marriage, I told the good a month, for I had not been brought up as a great lady, and the sympathy of any human being was precious to me.

Amad listened with interest, and in return told me some of the events and sorrows of her own life. Then, remembering her purpose, she set out in search of the coffee, which ought to have been brought to me at an hour before, but in my husband's absence my wishes were but seldom attended to, and I never dared to give orders. Presently she returned, bringing the coffee and a great large cake. "'See,' said she, setting it down, "'look at my plunder. "'Madame must eat.

"'Those who eat always laugh. "'And, besides, I have a little news that will please, madame.' "'Then she told me that, lying on a table in the great kitchen, "'was a bundle of letters come by the courier from Strasbourg that very afternoon. "'Then, fresh from her conversation with me, "'she had hastily untied the string that bound them, "'but had only just traced out one that she thought was from Germany. when a servant man came in, and, with the start he gave her, she dropped the letters,

which he picked up, swearing at her for having untied and disarranged them. She told him that she believed there was a letter there for her mistress, but he only swore the more, saying that if there was, it was no business of hers, or of his either, for that he had the strictest orders always to take all letters that arrived during his master's absence into the private sitting-room of the latter, a room into which I had never entered, although it opened out of my house, husband's dressing-room. I asked a month if she had not conquered and brought me this letter. No, indeed, she replied. It was almost as much as her life was worth to live among such a set of

servants. It was only a month ago that Jacques had stabbed Valentin for some jesting talk. Had I never missed Valentin, that handsome young lad who carried up the wood into my salon, poor fellow! He lies dead and cold now, and they said in the village he had put an end to himself. Those of the household knew better. Oh, I need not be afraid. Jacques was gone. No one knew where. But with such people, it was not safe to upbraid or insist. Monsieur would be at home the next day, and it would not be long to wait. But I felt as if I could not exist till the next day without the letter. It might be to say that my father was ill, dying. He might cry for his daughter from his deathbed. In short, there was no end to the thoughts and fancies that haunted me. It was of no use

for Amont to say that, after all, she might be mistaken, that she did not read writing well, that she had had but a glimpse of the address. I let my coffee cool, my food all became distasteful, and I wrung my hands with impatience to get at the letter and have some news of my dear ones at home. All the time, Amand kept her imperturbable good temper. first reasoning, then scolding. At last she said, as if wearied out, that if I would consent to make a good supper, she would see what could be done as to our going to Monsio's room in search of the letter after the servants were all gone to bed. We agreed to go together when all was still and look over the letters. There could be no harm in that. And yet, somehow, we were such cowards we dared not do it openly and in the face of the household. presently my supper came up partridges bread fruits and cream how well i remember that supper we put the untouched cake away in a sort of buffet and poured the cold coffee out of the window in order that the servants might not take offence at the apparent fancifulness of sending down for food i could not eat i was so anxious for all to be in bed that i told the footman who served that he need not wait to take away the plates and dishes but might go to bed long after i thought that i told the footman who served that he need not wait to take away the plates and dishes but might go to bed long after i thought

thought the house was quiet. Amant, in her caution, made me wait. It was past eleven before we set out, with cat-like steps and veiled light along the passages, to go to my husband's room and steal my own letter, if it was indeed there, a fact about which Amant had become very uncertain in the progress of our discussion. To make you understand my story, I must now try to explain to you the plan of the chateau. It had been, at one time, a fortified place of some strength, perched on the summit of a rock which projected from the side of the mountain. But additions had been made to the old building, which must have borne a strong resemblance to the castles overhanging the rind, and these new buildings were placed so as to command a magnificent few, being on the steepest

side of the rock, from which the mountain fell away, as it were, leaving the great plain of France in full survey. The ground plan was something of the shape of three sides of an oblob. My apartments in the modern edifice occupied the narrow end and had this grand prospect. The front of the castle was old and ran parallel to the road far below. In this were contained the offices and public rooms of various descriptions into which I never penetrated. The back wing, considering the new building in which my apartments were, as the center, consisted of many rooms, of a dark and gloomy character, as the mountainside shut out much of the sun, and heavy pine woods came down within a few yards of the windows. Yet on this side, on a projecting plateau of the rock, my husband had formed the

flower garden of which I have spoken, for he was a great cultivator of flowers in his leisure moments. Now my bedroom was the corner room of the new buildings on the part next to the mountains. Hence, I could have let myself down into the flower garden by my hands on the windowsill on one side, without danger of hurting myself, while the windows at right angles with these looked sheer down a descent of a hundred feet at least. Going still farther along the swing, you came to the old building. In fact, these two fragments of the ancient castle had formerly been attached by some such, connecting apartments as my husband had rebuilt. These rooms belonged to Monsieur de la Torrelle. His bedroom opened into mine. His dressing-room lay beyond, and that was pretty nearly all I knew.

For the servants, as well as he himself, had a knack of turning me back, under some pretense, if they ever found me walking about alone, as I was inclined to do when I first came, from a sort of curiosity to see the whole of the place of which I had found myself mistress. monsieur de lauderelle never encouraged me to go out alone either in a carriage or for a walk saying always that the roads run safe in those disturbed times indeed i have sometimes fancied since that the flower-garden to which the only access from the castle was through his rooms was designed in order to give me exercise and employment under his own eye but to return to that night i knew as i have said that monsieur de la turl's private room opened out of his own eye but to return to that night i knew as i have said that monsieur de la t'relle's private room opened out of his dressing room, and this out of his bedroom, which again opened into mine, the corner room. But there were other doors into all these rooms, and these doors led into a long gallery, lighted by windows, looking into the inner court. I do not remember our consulting

much about it. We went through my room into my husband's apartment, through the dressing room, but the door of communication into his study was locked, so there was nothing for it but to turn back and go by the gallery to the other door. I recollect noticing one or two things in these rooms, then seen by me for the first time. I remember the sweet perfume that hung in the air, the scent bottles of silver that decked his toilet table, and the whole apparatus for bathing and dressing, more luxurious even than those which he had provided for me. But the room itself was less splendid in its proportions than mine. In truth, the new buildings ended at the entrance to my husband's dressing room. There were deep window recesses and walls eight or nine feet thick, and even

the partitions between the chambers were three feet deep, but over all these doors or windows, there fell thick, heavy draperies, so that I should think no one could have heard in one room what passed in another. We went back into my room and out into the gallery. We had to shade our candle from a fear that possessed us. I don't know why, lest some of the servants in the opposite wing might trace our progress towards the part of the castle, unused by anyone except my husband. Somehow, I had always the feeling that all the domestics, except Amant, were spies upon me, and that I was trampled, in a web of observation and unspoken limitation, extending over all my actions. There was a light in the upper room. We paused, and Amant would have

again retreated, but I was chafing under the delays. What was the harm of seeking my father's unopened letter to me and my husband's study? I, generally the coward, now blamed Amant for her unusual timidity. But the truth was, she had far more reason for suspicion as to the proceedings of that terrible household that I had ever known of. I urged her. on. I pressed on myself. We came to the door, locked, but with the key in it, we turned it, we entered. The letters lay on the table, their white oblongs catching the light in an instant and revealing themselves to my eager eyes, hungering after the words of love from my peaceful, distant home. But just as I pressed forward to examine the letters, the candle which Amman held, caught in

some draft went out, and we were in darkness. Amand proposed that we should carry the letters back to my salon, collecting them as well as we could in the dark, and returning all but the expected one for me. But I begged her to return to my room, where I kept Tinder and Flint, and to strike a fresh light, and I remained alone in the room, of which I could only just distinguish the size

in the principal articles of furniture. A large table, with a deep overhanging cloth in the middle, escrottois, and other heavy articles against the walls. All this I could see as I stood there, my hand on the table close by the letters, my face towards the window, which, both from the darkness of the wood growing high up the mountainside and the faint light of the declining moon, seemed only like an oblong of paler, purpler, black than the shadowy room. How much I remembered from my one instantaneous glance before the candle went out, how much I saw as my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I do not know. But even now, in my dreams,

comes up that room of horror, distinct in its profound shadow. Amant could hardly have been gone a minute before I felt an additional gloom before the window, and heard soft movements outside, soft but resolute, and continued until the end was accomplished, and the window raised. immortal terror of people forcing an entrance at such an hour and in such a manner as to leave no doubt of their purpose i would have turned to fly when first i heard the noise only that i feared by any quick motion to catch their attention as i also ran the danger of doing by opening the door which was all but closed and to whose handling i was unaccustomed again quick as lightning i bethought me of the hiding-place between the locked door to my husband's dressing-room and the portier which covered it But I gave that up. I felt as if I could not reach it without screaming or fainting. So I sank down softly and crept under the table, hidden as I hoped, by the great deep table cover with its heavy fringe. I had not recovered my swooning senses fully and was trying to reassure myself as to my being in a place of comparative safety.

For, above all things, I dreaded the betrayal of fainting, and struggled hard for such courage as I might attain by deadening myself to the day. I was in by inflicting intense pain on myself. You have often asked me the reason of that mark on my hand. It was there in my agony. I bit out a piece of flesh with my relentless teeth, thankful for the pain, which helped to numb my terror. I say I was but just concealed within. I heard the window lifted, and one after another stepped over the sill

and stood by me so close that I could have touched their feet. Then they laughed and whispered. My brain swam so that I could not tell the meaning of their words, but I heard my husband's laughter among the rest, low, hissing, scornful, as he kicked something heavy that they had dragged in over the floor and which laid near me, so near that my husband's kick in touching it,

touched me too. I don't know why. I can't tell how, but some feeling, and not curiosity prompted me to put out my hand ever so softly, ever so little, and feel in the darkness for what lay spurned beside me. I stole my groping palm of the clenched and chilly hand of a corpse. Strange to say, this roused me to an instant vividness of thought. Till this moment I had almost forgotten a month.

Now I planned with feverish rapidity how I could give her a warning not to return, or rather I should say, I tried to plan, for all my projects were utterly futile, as I might have seen from the first. I could only hope she would hear the voices of those who were now busy in trying to kindle a light, swearing awful oaths at the mislaid articles, which would have enabled them to strike fire. I heard her step outside coming nearer and nearer. I saw from my hiding place the line of the line of the last. light beneath the door more and more distinctly. Close to it, her footstep paused. The men inside, at the time I thought they had been, only two, but I found out afterwards there were three, paused in their endeavors, and were quite still, as breathless as myself, I suppose. Then she slowly pushed the door open with gentle motion to save her flickering candle from being again extinguished. For a moment, all was still. Then I

I heard my husband say as he advanced towards her. He wore writing boots the shape of which I knew well, as I could see them in the light. Amant, may I ask what brings you here into my private room? He stood between her and the dead body of a man, from which ghastly heap I shrank away as it almost touched me. So close were we all together. I could not tell whether she saw it or not. I could give her no warning, nor make any dumb utterance of signs to bid her what to say. If indeed, I knew myself, what would be best for her to say. Her voice was quite changed when she spoke, quite hoarse and very low, yet it was steady enough as she said. What was the truth, that she had come to look for a letter which she believed had arrived for me from Germany? Good, brave,

a month, not a word about me, Monsieur de La Torrelle, answered with that. "'What's your own? "'Irne,' answered with a grim blasphemy and a fearful threat. He would have no one prying into his premises. Madame should have her letters, if there were any, when he chose to give them to her, if indeed he thought it well to give them to her at all. As for Amante, this was her first warning, but it was also her last.

And taking the candle out of her hand, he turned her out of the room, his companions discreetly making a screen, so as to throw the corpse into deep shadow. I heard the key turn in the door after her. If I had ever had any thought of escape, it was gone now. I only hoped that whatever was to befall me might soon be over, for the tension of nerve was growing more than I could bear.

The instant she could be supposed to be out of hearing, two voices began speaking in the most angry terms to my husband, upbraiding him for not having detained her, gagged her, nay, one was for killing her, saying he had seen her eye fall on the face of her. the dead man, whom he now kicked in his passion. Though the form of their speech was as if they were speaking to equals, yet in their tone there was something of fear. I am sure my husband was their superior or captain or somewhat.

He replied to them almost as if he were scoffing at them, saying it was such an expenditure of labor having to do with fools, that ten to one the woman was only telling the simple truth, and that she was frightened enough by discovering her master in whose room to be thankful to escape and return to her mistress, to whom he could easily explain on the morrow how he happened to return in the dead of night. But his companions fell to cursing me, and saying that since Monsieur de La Torrell had been married he was fit for nothing but to trust himself fine and sent himself with perfume, that, as for me, they could have got him twenty girls prettier, and with far more spirit in them. He quietly answered that I suited him, and that was enough. All this time

they were doing something. I could not see what to the corpse. Sometimes they were too busy rifling the dead body, I believe, to talk. Again, they let it fall with the heavy, resistless thud and took to quarreling. They taunted my husband with angry vehemence, enraged at his scoffing and scornful replies, his mocking laughter. Yes, holding up his poor dead victim, the better to strip him of whatever he wore that was valuable. I heard my husband laugh, just as he had done when exchange repartee in the little salon of the Rupex at Karl's Rue, I hated and dreaded him from that moment. At length, as if to make an end of the subject he said with cool determination in his voice, now, my good friends, what is the use of all this talking when you know in your hearts that,

if I suspected my wife of knowing more than I choose of my affairs, she would not outlive the day. Remember Victorine, because she merely joked about my heart. affairs in an imprudent manner and rejected my advice to keep a prudent tongue to see what she liked but asked nothing and say nothing she has gone a long journey longer than to Paris but this one is different to her we all know that Madame Victori knew she was such a chatterbox but this one may find out a vast deal and never breathe a word about it she is so slime. Some fine day we may have the country raised and the gendarmes down upon us from Strasbourg, and all owing to your pretty doll with her cunning ways of coming over you.

I think this roused Monsieur de la Torrelle a little from his contemptuous indifference, for he ground an oath through his teeth and said, feel this dagger is sharp, if my wife breathes a word and i am such a fool as not to have stopped her mouth effectually before she can bring down gendarmes upon us just let that good steel find its way to my heart let her gasp but one tital let her have but one slight suspicion that i am not a grand proprietor much less imagine that i am chief of chauffeur and she follows victorine on the long journey beyond paris that very day "'She'll out with you yet, or I never judged women well. Those still silent ones are the devil. She'll be off during some of your absences, having picked out some secret that will break us all on the wheel. "'Bah!' said his voice, and then in a minute he added,

"'Let her go if she will. But where she goes, I will follow. So don't cry before you're hurt.' By this time they had nearly stripped the body and the conversation turned on what they should do with it. i learnt that the dead man was the sieur de pocii a neighboring gentleman whom i had often heard of as hunting with my husband i had never seen him but they spoke as if he had come upon them while they were robbing some cologne merchant torturing him after the cruel practice of the chauffeur by roasting the feet of their victims in order to compel them to reveal any hidden circumstances connected with their wealth of which the chauffeur afterwards made use and the sieur de poissis coming down upon them and recognizing monsieur de la trelle they had killed him and brought him thither after nightfall i heard him whom i called my husband laugh his little light laugh as he spoke of the way in which the dead body had been strapped before one of the writers in such a way that it appeared to any passer-by as if in truth the murderer were tenderly supporting some sick person

he repeated some mocking reply of double meaning which he himself had given to some one who made inquiry he enjoyed the play upon words softly applauding his own wit and all the time the poor helpless outstretched arms of the dead lay close to his dainty boot. Then another stooped, my heart stopped beating, and picked up a letter lying on the ground, a letter that had dropped out of Monsieur de Poissie's pocket, a letter from his wife, full of tender words of endearment and pretty babblings of love. This was read aloud with coarse, ribbled comments on every sentence, each trying to outdo the previous speaker. When they came to some pretty words about his sweet Maurice, their little child away with its mother on some visit,

they laughed at Monsieur de la Torrelle and told him that he would be hearing such a woman's driveling some day. Up to that moment, I think, I had only feared him, but his unnatural, half-ferocious reply made me hate even more than I dreaded him. But now they grew weary of their savage merriment. The jewels and watch had been apprised. The money and papers examined. and apparently there was some necessity for the body being interred quietly and before daybreak they had not dared leave him where he was slain for fear lest people should come and recognize him and raise the hue and cry upon them for they all along spoke as if it was their constant endeavor to keep the immediate neighborhood of la roche in the most orderly and tranquil condition so as never to give cause for visits from the gendarme they disputed a little as to whether they should make their way into the the castle larder through the gallery and satisfy their hunger before the hasty internment, or afterwards. I listened with eager, feverish interest, as soon as this meaning of their speeches reached my hot and troubled brain, for at the time the words they uttered seemed only

to stamp themselves with terrible force on my memory, so that I could hardly keep from repeating them aloud like a dull, miserable, unconscious echo. But my brain was numb to the sense of what they said, unless I myself were named. And then, I suppose, some instinct of self-preservation stirred within me and quickened my sense. And how I strained my ears and nerved my hands and limbs, beginning to twitch with convulsive movements which I feared might betray me. I gathered every word they spoke, not knowing which proposal to wish for, but feeling that whatever was finally decided upon, my only chance of escape was drawing near. I once feared lest my husband, should go to his bedroom before I had had that one chance, in which case he would most

likely have perceived my absence. He said that his hands were soiled. I shuddered, for it might be with life-blood, and he would go and cleanse them. But some bitter Jess turned his purpose, and he left the room with the other two, left it by the gallery door, left me alone in the dark with a stiffening corpse. Now, now was my time, if ever, and yet I could not move. It was not my cramped and stiffen joints that crippled me. It was the sensation of that dead man's close presence. I almost fancied. I almost fancy still. I heard the arm nearest me move, lift itself up, as if once more imploring, and fall in dead despair. At that fancy, if fancy it were, I screamed aloud in mad terror, and the sound of my own strange voice broke the spell. I drew myself to the side of the side of the table farthest from the corpse with as much slow caution as if I really could have feared the clutch of that poor dead arm powerless forevermore. I softly raised myself up and stood sick and trembling, holding by the table too dizzy to know what to do next. I nearly fainted

when a low voice spoke, when a month from the outside of the door whispered, Madame! The faithful creature had been on the watch, had heard my scream, and having seen the the three ruffians troop along the gallery down the stairs and across the court to the offices in the other wing of the castle. She had stolen to the door of the room in which I was. The sound of her voice gave me strength. I walked straight towards it as one benighted on a dreary moor, suddenly perceiving the small, steady light which tells of human dwellings, takes heart and steer straight onward.

Where I was, where that voice was, I knew not, but go to it I must or die. the door once opened i know not by which of us i fell upon her neck grasping her tight till my hands ached with the tension of their hold yet she never uttered a word only she took me up in her vigorous arms and bore me to my room and laid me on my bed i do not know more as soon as i was placed there i lost sense i came to myself with a horrible dread lest my husband was by me with a belief that he was in the room in hiding waiting to hear my first place there i lost sense i came to myself with a horrible dread lest my husband was by me with the belief that he was in the room in hiding waiting waiting to hear my first words watching for the least sign of the terrible knowledge I possessed to murder me. I dared not breathe quicker. I measured and timed each heavy inspiration. I did not speak, nor move, nor even open my eyes, for long after I was in my full, my miserable senses. I heard someone treading softly about the room, as if with a purpose, not as if for curiosity, or merely to beguile the time. Someone passed in and out of the room. Someone passed in and out of the room.

of the salon, and I still lay quiet, feeling as if death were inevitable, but wishing that the agony of death were passed. Again, faintness stole over me, but just as I was sinking into the horrible feeling of nothingness, I heard Amant's voice close to me saying, Drink this, Madame, and let us be gone. All is ready. I let her put her arm under my head and raise me, and pour something down my throat. All the time she kept talking in a quiet measured voice, unlike her own, so dry and authoritative. She told me that a suit of her clothes lay ready for me, that she herself was as much disguised as the circumstances permitted her to be, that what provisions I had left from my supper were stowed away in her pockets. And so she went on,

dwelling on little details of the most commonplace description, but never alluding for an instant to the fearful cause why flight was necessary. I made no inquiry as to how she knew or what she do, i never asked her either then or afterwards i could not bear it we kept our dreadful secret close but i suppose she must have been in the dressing-room adjoining and heard all in fact i dare not speak even to her as if there were anything beyond the most common event in life in our preparing thus to leave the house of blood by stealth in the dead of night she gave me directions short condensed directions without reasons just as you do to a child and like a child i obeyed her she went often to the door and listened and often too she went to the window and looked anxiously out for me i saw nothing but her and I dared not let my eyes wander from her for a minute. I heard nothing in the deep midnight silence but her soft movements and the heavy beating of my own heart.

At last she took my hand and led me in the dark, through the salon, once more into the terrible gallery, where across the black darkness the windows admitted pale, sheeded ghosts of light upon the floor. Clinging to her I went, unquestioninging, for she was human sympathy to me after the isolation of my unspeakable terror. On we went, turning to the left instead of to the right, past my suite of sitting rooms where the gilding was red with blood,

into that unknown wing of the castle that fronted the main road, lying parallel far below. She guided me along the basement passages to which we had now descended, until we came to a little open door, through which the air blew chill and cold, bringing for the first time a sensation of life to me the door led into a kind of cellar through which we groped our way to an opening like window but which instead of being glazed was only fenced with iron bars two of which were loose as amont evidently knew for she took them out with the ease of one who had performed the action often before and then helped me to follow her out into the free open air we stole round the end of the building and on turning the corner she first i felt her hold on me tightened for an instant and the next step i too heard distant voices and the blows of a spade upon the heavy soil for the night was very warm and still

We had not spoken a word. We did not speak now. Touch was safer and as expressive. She turned down towards the high road. I followed. I did not know the path. We stumbled again and again, and I was much bruised, so doubtless was she, but bodily pain did me good. At last we were on the planer path of the high road. I had such faith in her that I did not venture to speak, even when she paused as wondering to which hand she should turn. But now, for the first time, she spoke. Which way did you come when he brought you here first? I pointed. I could not speak.

We turned in the opposite direction, still going along the high road. In about an hour we struck up to the mountainside, scrambling far up before we even dared to rest, far up and away again before the day had fully dawned. Then we looked about for some place of rest and concealment, and now we dared to speak in whispers. Amont told me that she had locked the door of communication between his bedroom and mine, and, as in a dream, I was aware that she had also locked and brought away the key of the door between the ladder and the salon.

He will have been too busy this night to think much about you. He will suppose you are asleep. I shall be the first to be missed, but they will only just now be discovering our loss. I remember those last words of hers made me pray to go on. I felt as if we were losing precious time and thinking either of rest or concealment, but she hardly replied to me, so busy was she in seeking out some hiding place. At length, giving it up in despair, we proceeded onwards a little way. The mountainside sloped downwards rapidly,

and in the full morning light we saw ourselves in a narrow valley made by a stream which forced its way along it. about a mile lower down there rose the pale blue smoke of a village a mill-wheel was lashing up the water close at hand though out of sight keeping under the cover of every sheltering tree or bush we worked our way down past the mill down to a one-arched bridge which doubtless formed part of the road between the village and the mill this will do said she and we crept under the space and climbing a little way up the rough stone work we seated ourselves on a projecting ledge and crouched in the deep damp shadow a mont sent a little above me and made me lay my head on her lap then she fed me and took some food herself and opening out her great dark cloak she covered up every light-colored speck about us and thus we sat shivering and shuddering yet feeling a kind of her great dark cloak she covered up every light-colored speck about us and thus we sat shivering and shuddering yet feeling a kind of a kind of a kind of a cold of rest through it all, simply from the fact that motion was no longer imperative, and that during the daylight our only chance of safety was to be still. But the damp shadow in which we were sitting was blighting, from the circumstance of the sunlight

never penetrating there, and I dreaded lest, before night, and the time for exertion again came on. I should feel illness creeping all over me. To add to our discomfort, it had rained the whole day long, and the stream, fed by a thitherion. thousand little mountain brooklets began to swell into a torrent, rushing over the stones with a perpetual and dizzying noise. Every now and then I was awakened from the painful doze into which I continually fell by a sound of horses' feet over our head, sometimes lumbering heavily as if dragging a burden, sometimes rattling and galloping, and with the sharper cry of men's voices coming cutting through the roar of the waters. At length, day fell. We had to drop

into the stream, which came above our knees as we waited to the bank. There we stood stiff and shivering. Even Amont's courage seemed to fail. We must pass this night in shelter somehow, said she, for indeed the rain was coming down piteously. I said nothing. I thought that surely the end must be death in some shape, and I only hope that to death might not be added the terror of the cruelty of men. In a minute or so she had resolved on her course of action. We went up the stream to the mill. The familiar sounds, the scent of the wheat, the flower whitening the walls, all reminded me of home,

and it seemed to me as if I must struggle out of this nightmare and awaken and find myself once more a happy girl by the Nekar side. They were long and unbarring the door at which Amant had knocked. At length, an old, feeble voice inquired, who was there? and what was sought. Amant answered shelter from the storm for two women, but the old woman replied with suspicious hesitation that she was sure it was a man who was asking for shelter and that she could not let us in. But at length she satisfied herself and unbarred the heavy door and admitted us. She was not an unkindly woman, but her thoughts all traveled in one circle, and that was that her master, the Miller, had told her on no account to let any man into the place during his absence,

and that she did not know if he would not think two women as bad. And yet that as we were not men, no one could say she had disobeyed him, for it was a shame to let a dog be out at such a night as this. Amant, with ready wit, told her to let no one know that we had taken shelter there that night, and that then her master could not blame her. And while she was thus enjoining secrecy as the wisest course with a view to far other people than the miller, she was hastily helping me to take off my wet clothes and spreading them, as well as the brown mantle that had covered us both before the great stove which warmed the room with the effectual heat that the old woman's failing vitality required. All this time the poor creature was discussing with herself as to whether

she had disobeyed orders in a kind of garrulous way that made me fear much for her capability of retaining anything secret if she was questioned. By and by she wandered away to an unnecessary revelation of her master's whereabouts, gone to help in the search for his landlord, de Posse, who lived at the chateau just above, and who had not returned from his chase the day before. So the intendant imagined he might have met with some accident, and had summoned the neighbors to beat the forest and the hillside. She told us much besides, giving us to understand that she would fain meet with a place as housekeeper where there were more servants and less to do, as her life here was very lonely and dull, especially since her master's son had gone away,

gone to the wars. She then took her supper, which was evidently apportioned out to her with a sparing hand, as, even if the idea had come into her head, she had not enough to offer us an e. Fortunately, warmth was all that we required, and that, thanks to Amant's care, was returning to our chilled bodies. After supper, the old woman grew drowsy, but she seemed uncomfortable at the idea of going to sleep and leaving us still in the house. Indeed, she gave us pretty broad hints as to the propriety of our going once more out into the bleak and stormy night, but we begged to be allowed to stay under shelter of

some kind, and at last a bright idea came over her, and she bade us mount by a ladder to a kind of loft, which went half over the lofty mill kitchen in which we were sitting. We obeyed her, what else could we do, and found ourselves in a spacious floor without any safeguard or wall, boarding, or railing, to keep us from falling over into the kitchen in case we went too near the edge. It was, in fact, the storeroom or garret for the household. There was bedding piled up, boxes and chests, mill sacks, the winter store of apples and nuts, bundles of old clothes, broken furniture, and many other things. No sooner were we up there than the old woman dragged the ladder by which we had ascended away with a chuckle, as if she was now secure that we could do no mischief,

and sat herself down again once more to doze and await her master's return. We pulled out some bedding and gladly laid ourselves down on our dried clothes, and in some warmth, hoping to have the sleep, we so much needed to refresh ourselves and prepare us for the next day. But I could not sleep, and I was aware from her breathing that Amant was equally wakeful. We could both see through the crevices between the boards that formed the flooring into the kitchen below, very partially lighted by the common lamp that hung against the wall near the stove on the opposite side to that on which we were. End of Portion 2. Portion 3 of the Grey Woman. Gray Woman by Elizabeth Clyhorn Gaskell, Portion 3.

Far on in the night there were voices outside, reached us in our hiding place, an angry knocking at the door, and we saw, through the chinks, the old woman roused herself up to go and open it for her master, who came in, evidently half-drunk. To my sick horror, he was followed by Lafiev, apparently as sober and wily as ever. They were talking together as they came in, disputing about something. But the Miller stopped the conversation to swear at the old woman for having fallen asleep, and, with tipsy anger, and even with blows, drove the poor old creature out of the kitchen to bed. Then he and Lefevre went on talking about the Sieu-Dipose's disappearance.

It seemed that Lefeuva had been out all day, along with other of my husband's men, ostensibly assisting in the search, in all probability, trying to blind the Sier-Dipose's followers by putting them on a wrong scent, and also, I fancied, from one or two of Lefeo's sly questions, combining the hidden purpose of discovering us. Although the Miller was tenant and vassal to the sieur-de-possi, he seemed to me to be much more in league with the people of Monsieur de la Torrelle. He was evidently aware, in part, of the life which Lefiev and the others led, although, again, I do not suppose he knew or imagined one half of their crimes. And also, I think, he was seriously interested in discovering the fate of his master.

Little suspecting Lefeuve of murder or violence. He kept talking himself and letting out all sorts of thoughts and opinions, watched by the keen eyes of Lefeuve gleaming out below his shaggy eyebrows. It was evidently not the cue of the latter to let out that his master's wife had escaped from that vile and terrible den. But though he never breathed a word relating to us, not the less was I certain he was thirsting for our blood, and lying in wait for us at every turn of events. Presently he got up and took his leave, and the miller bolted him out and stumbled off to bed. Then we fell asleep, and slept sound and long. The next morning, when I awoke, I saw a month, half-raised, resting on one hand,

and eagerly gazing with straining eyes into the kitchen below. I looked, too, and both heard and saw the Miller and two of his men eagerly and loudly talking about the old woman, who had not appeared as usual to make the fire in the stove and prepare her master's breakfast, and who, now, late on in the morning, had been found dead in her bed, whether from the effect of her master's blows the night before, or from natural causes, who can tell? The Miller's conscience upbraided him a little, I should say, for he was eagerly declaring his value for his housekeeper, and repeating how often she had spoken of the happy life she led with him. The men might have their doubts, but they did not wish to offend the Miller, and all agreed that

the necessary steps should be taken for a speedy funeral. And so they went out, leaving us in our loft, but so much alone that, for the first time almost, we ventured to speak freely, though still in hushed voice, pausing to listen continually. Amont took a more cheerful view of the whole occurrence than I did. She said that, had the old woman lived, we should have had to depart that morning, and that this quiet departure would have been the best thing we could have had to hope for, as in all probability the housekeeper would have told her master of us and of our resting place, and this fact would, sooner or later, have been brought to the knowledge of those from whom we most desired to keep it concealed.

But that now we had time to rest, and a shelter to rest in, during the first hot pursuit, which we knew to a fatal certainty was being carried on. The remnants of our food and the stored-up fruit would supply us with provision. The only thing to be feared was that something might be required from the loft, and the miller or someone else mount up in search of it. But even then, with a little arrangement of boxes and chests, one part might be so kept in shadow that we might yet escape observation. All this comforted me a little, but I asked,

how were we ever to escape? The ladder was taken away, which was our only means of descent. But Amand replied that she could make a sufficient ladder of the rope lying coiled, among other things, to drop us down the ten feet or so, with the advantage of its being portable, so that we might carry it away and thus avoid all betrayal of the fact that anyone had ever been hidden in the loft. During the two days that intervened before we did escape, Amand made good use of her time. She looked into every box and chest during the man's absence at his mill, and finding in one box an old suit of man's clothes, which had probably belonged to the Miller's

absence son, she put them on to see if they would fit her, and when she found that they did, she cut her own hair to the shortness of a man's, made me clip her black eyebrows as close as though they had been shaved, and by cutting up old corks into pieces such as would go into her cheeks, she altered both the shape of her face and her voice to a degree which I should not have believed possible. All this time I lay like one stunned, my body resting and renewing its strength, but I myself in an almost idiotic state. I surely I could not have taken the stupid interest which I remember I did in all amounts energetic preparations for disguise. I absolutely recollect once the feeling of a smile coming over my stiff face as some new exercise of her

cleverness proved a success. But towards the second day, she required me, too, to exert myself, and then all my heavy despair returned. I let her dye my fair hair and complexion with the decaying shells of the stored-up walnuts. I let her blacken my teeth, and even voluntarily broke a front tooth the better to affect my disguise. But through it all, I had no hope of evading my terrible husband. The third night the funeral was over. The drinking ended, the guests gone. The miller put to bed by his men being too drunk to have. The miller, help himself. They stopped a little while in the kitchen, talking and laughing about the new housekeeper likely to come, and they, too, went off, shutting but not locking the door. Everything favored

us. Amont had tried her ladder on one of the two previous nights, and could, by a dexterous throw from beneath, unfastened from the hook to which it was fixed when it had served its office. She made up a bundle of worthless old clothes in order that we might the better preserve our characters of a traveling peddler and his wife. She stuffed a hump on her back. She thickened my figure. She left her own clothes deep down beneath a heap of others in the chest

from which she had taken the man's dress, which she wore. And with a few francs in her pocket, the sole money we had either of us about us when we escaped, we let ourselves down the ladder, unhooked it, and passed into the cold darkness of night again.

We had discussed the route, which it would be well for us to take while we lay perdue in our loft. Amont had told me then that her reason for inquiry, when we first left Le Roche, by which way I had first been brought to it, was to avoid the pursuit which she was sure would first be made in the direction of Germany, but that now she thought we might return to that district of country where my German fashion of speaking French would excite least observation. I thought that Amant herself had something peculiar in her accent, which I had heard Monsieur de la Torrell sneer at as Norman Patois, but I said not a word beyond agreeing to her

proposal that we should bend our steps towards Germany. Once there, we should, I thought, be safe. Alas! I forgot the unruly time that was overspreading all Europe, overturning all law, and all the protection which law gives. How we wandered, not daring to ask our way, how we lived, how we struggled through many a danger and still more terrors of danger, I shall not tell you now. I will only relate two of our adventures before we reached Frankfurt. The first, although fatal to an innocent lady, was yet, I believe, the cause of my safety. The second, I shall tell you that you may understand why I did not return to my former home, as I had hoped to do when we lay in the miller's loft, and I first became capable of groping after an idea of what my

future life might be. I cannot tell you how much in these doubtings and wanderings I became attached to Amant. I have sometimes feared since, lest I cared for her only because she was so necessary to my own safety, but no, it was not so, or not so only, or principally. She said once that she was flying for her own life as well as for mine, but we dared not speak much on our danger, or on the horrors that had gone before. We planned a little what was to be our future course, but even for that we did not look forward long. How could we, when every day we scarcely knew if we should see the sun go down? For Amont knew, or conjectured far more than I did, of the atrocity of the gang to which Monsieur

de Laeterelle belonged, and every now and then, just as we seemed to be sinking into the calm of security, we fell upon traces of a pursuit after us in all directions. Once, I remember, we must have been nearly three weeks wearily walking through unfrequented ways, day after day, not daring to make inquiry as to our whereabouts, nor yet to seem purposeless in our wanderings. We came to a kind of lonely roadside ferriers and blacksmiths. I was so tired that Amont declared that, come what might, we would stay there all night, and accordingly, she entered the house and boldly announced herself as a traveling tailor, ready to do any odd jobs of work that might be required for a night's lodging and food for herself and wife. She had adopted this

plan once or twice before, and with good success, for her father had been a tailor in Rouen, and as a girl, she had often helped him with his work and knew the tailor's slang and habits down to the particular whistle and cry which in France tells so much to those of a trade. At this blacksmiths, as at most other solitary houses far away from a town, there was not only a store of men's clothes laid by as wanting mending when the housewife could afford time, but there was a natural craving after news from a distance. Such news as a wandering tailor is bound to furnish. The early November afternoon was closing into evening as we sat down,

she cross-legged on the great table in the blacksmith's kitchen, drawn close to the window. I, close behind her, sewing at another part of the same garment, and from time to time well-scoled by my seeming husband. All at once she turned round to speak to me. It was only one word. Courage. I had seen nothing. I sat out of the light, but I turned sick for an instant, and then I braced myself up into a strange strength of endurance to go through. I knew not what. The blacksmith's forge was in a shed beside the house, infronting the road. I heard the hammers stopped plying their continual, rhythmical beat. She had seen why they ceased.

A rider had come up to the forge and dismounted, leading his horse in to be re-shod. The broad red light of the forge fire had revealed the face of the rider to Amant, and she apprehended the consequence that really ensued. The rider, after some words with the blacksmith, was ushered in by him into the house. place where we sat. Here, good wife, a cup of wine, and some galette for this gentleman. Anything, anything, madam, that I can eat and drink in my hand while my horse is being reshought. I am in haste and must get on to Forbach tonight. The blacksmith's wife lighted her lamp. Amand had asked her for it five minutes before. How thankful we were that she had not more

speedily complied with our request. As it was, we sat in dusk shadow, pretending to stitch away, scarcely able to see. The lamp was placed on the stove, near which my husband, for it was he, stood and armed himself. By and by he turned round and looked all over the room, taking us in with the same degree of interest as the inanimate furniture. Amand, cross-legged, fronting him, stooped over her work, whistling softly all the while. He turned again to the stove, impatiently rubbing his hands. He had finished his wine in Galette and wanted to be off. I am in haste, my good woman. Ask thy husband to get on more quickly. I will pay him double if he makes haste. The woman went out to do his bidding, and he once more turned round to face us. Amant went on to the

second part of the tune. He took it up, whistled a second for an instant or so, and then the blacksmith's wife re-entering, he moved towards her, as if to receive her answer the more speedily. One moment, monsieur, only one moment. There was a nail out of the off foreshoe, which my husband is replacing, it would delay Monsieur again if that shoe also came off. Madame is right, said he, but my haste is urgent. If Madame knew my reasons, she would pardon my impatience. Once a happy husband, now a deserted and betrayed man, I pursue a wife on whom I lavished all my love, but who has abused my confidence, and fled from my house, doubtless to some paramour, carrying off with her all the jewels and money on which she could lay her hands. It is possible Madame may have heard or

seeing something of her. She was accompanied in her flight by a base, profligate woman from Paris, whom I, unhappy man, had myself engaged from my wife's waiting-maid, little dreaming what corruption I was bringing into my house. Is it possible? said the good woman, throwing up her hands. Amant went on whistling a little lower out of respect to the conversation. However, I am tracing the wicked fugitives. I am on their track. And the handsome, effeminate face looked as ferocious as any demons. They will not escape me, but every minute is a minute of misery to me till I meet my wife.

Madame has sympathy, has she not? He drew his face into a hard, unnatural smile, and then both went out to the forge, as if once more to hasten the blacksmith over his work. Amman stopped her whistling for one instant. Go on as you are, without change of an eyelid even, and a few minutes he will be gone, and it will be over. It was a necessary caution, for I was on the point of giving way and throwing myself weakly upon her neck. We went on, she whistling and stitching, I making semblance to sew. And it was well we did so, for almost directly he came back for his whip, which he had laid down and forgotten.

And again I felt one of those sharp, quick-scanning glances sent all around the room and taking in all. Then we heard him right away, and then, it had been long too dark to see well, I dropped my work and gave way to my trembling and shuddering. The blacksmith's wife returned. She was a good creature. Amman told her I was cold and weary, and she insisted on my stopping my work and going to sit near the stove, hastening at the same time her preparations for supper, which, in honor of us

and of Monsieur's liberal payment, was to be a little less frugal than ordinary. It was well for me that she made me taste a little of the cider soup she was preparing, or I could not have held up, in spite of Amant's warning look, and the remembrance of her frequent exhortations to act resolutely up to the characters we had assumed, whatever befell. To cover my agitation, Amant's woman. stopped her whistling and began to talk. And by the time the blacksmith came in, she and the good woman of the house were in full flow. He began at once upon the handsome gentleman who had paid him so well. All his sympathy was with him, and both he and his wife only wished he might overtake

his wicked wife and punish her as she deserved. And then the conversation took a turn, not uncommon to those whose lives are quiet and monotonous. Everyone seemed to vie with each other in telling about some horror, and the savage and mysterious band of robbers called the chauffeur, who infested all the roads leading to the Rhine, with Shindarhans at their head, furnished many a tale which made the very marrow of my bones run cold, and quenched even Amant's power of talking. Her eyes grew large and wild, her cheeks blanched, and for once she sought by her looks, help from me. The new call upon me roused me. I rose and said, with their permission, my husband and i would seek our bed for that we had travelled far and were early risers i added that we would get up at times and finish our piece of work the blacksmith said we should be early birds if we rose before him and the good wife seconded my proposal with kindly bustle

one other such story as those they had been relating and i do believe a month would have fainted as it was a night's rest set her up we arose and finished our work betimes and shared the plentiful breakfast of the family. Then we had to set forth again, only knowing that to Forbock we must not go, yet believing, as was indeed the case, that Forbock lay between us and that Germany to which we were directing our course. Two days more we wandered on, making a round, I suspect,

and returning upon the road to Forbock, a league or two nearer to that town than the blacksmith's house. But as we never made inquiries, I hardly knew where we were, when we came one night to a small town with a good large rambling inn in the very center of the principal street. We had begun to feel as if there were more safety in towns than in the loneliness of the country. As we had parted with a rig of mine not many days before to a traveling jeweler, who was too glad to purchase it far below its real value to make many inquiries as to how it came into the possession of a poor working tailor, such as Amant, seemed to be.

We resolved to stay at this inn all night and gather such particulars and information as we could by which to direct our onward course. We took our supper in the darkest corner of the Salamanger, having previously bargained for a small bedroom across the court and over the stables. We needed food sorely, but we hurried on our meal from dread of anyone entering that public room who might recognize us. just in the middle of our meal the public diligence drove lumbering up under the port cocher and disgorged its passengers most of them turned into the room where we sat cowering and fearful for the door was opposite to the porter's lodge and both opened on to the wide-covered entrance from the street among the passengers came in a young fair-haired lady attended by an elderly french maid the poor young creature tossed her head and shrank away from the common room full of evil smells in promiscuous company and demanded in German-French to be taken to some private apartment. We heard that she and her maid had come in the coupe, and probably from pride, poor young lady. She had avoided all association with her fellow passengers, thereby exciting their dislike and

ridicule. All these little pieces of hearsay had a significance to us afterwards, though at the time the only remark that made that bore upon the future was Amant's whisper to me that the young lady's hair was exactly the color of mine, which she had cut off and burned in the stove in the miller's kitchen in one of her descents from our hiding place in the loft. As soon as we could, we struck round in the shadow, leaving the boisterous and merry fellow passengers to their supper. We crossed the court, borrowed a lantern from the ostler, and scrambled up the rude step to our chamber above the stable. There was no door into it. The entrance was the hole into which the ladder fitted. The window looked into the court. We were tired and soon fell asleep. I was wakened by a

noise in the stable below. One instant of listening, and I awakened Amand, placing my hand on her mouth to prevent any exclamation in her half-rous state. We heard my husband speaking about his horse to the ostler. It was his voice, I am sure of it. Amman said so too. We durst not move to rise and satisfy ourselves. For five minutes or so, he went on giving directions. Then he left the stable, and, softly stealing to our window, we saw him cross the court and re-enter the inn. We consulted as to what we should do. We feared to excite remark or suspicion by descending and leaving our chamber, or else immediate escape was our strongest idea. Then the Osler left the stable, locking the door on the outside. We must try and drop through the window, if indeed,

it is well to go at all, said Amant. With reflection came wisdom. We should excite suspicion by leaving without paying our bill. We were on foot, and might easily be pursued. So we sat on our bed's edge, talking and shivering, while from across the court the laughter rang merrily, and the company slowly dispersed one by one, their lights flitting past the windows as they went upstairs,

and settled each one to his rest. We crept into our bed, holding each other tight, and listening to every sound as if we thought we were tracked and might meet our death at any moment in the dead of night just as the profound stillness preceding the turn into another day we heard a soft cautious step crossing the yard the key into the stable was turned some one came into the stable we felt rather than heard him there a horse started a little and made a restless movement with his feet then whinied recognition he who had entered made two or three low sounds to the animal, and then led him into the court. Amman sprang to the window with the noiseless activity of a cat. She looked out, but dared not speak a word. We heard the great door into the street open, a pause for mounting, and the horse's footsteps were lost in distance. Then Amont came back to me. It was he! He is gone, said she, and once more we lay down,

trembling and shaking. This time we fell sound asleep. We were. We slept long and late. We were awakened by many hurrying feet and many confused voices. All the world seemed awake and astir. We rose and dressed ourselves, and coming down, we looked around among the crowd collected in the courtyard in order to assure ourselves he was not there before we left the shelter of the stable. The instant we were seeing two or three people rushed to us.

Have you heard? Do you know that poor young lady? Oh, come and see! And so we were hurried almost in spite of our ourselves, across the court, and up the great open stairs of the main building of the inn, into a bedchamber, where lay the beautiful young German lady, so full of graceful pride the night before, now white and still in death. By her stood the French maid, crying and gesticulating, "'Oh, madame, if you had but suffered me to stay with you! Oh, the Baron, what will he say?'

And so she went on. Her state had but just been discovered. It had been supposed that she was fatigued and was sleeping late until a few minutes before. The surgeon of the town had been sent for, and the landlord of the inn was trying vainly to enforce order until he came, and from time to time drinking little cups of brandy and offering them to the guests, who were all assembled there, pretty much as the servants were doing in the courtyard. At last the surgeon came, all fell back and hung on the words that were to fall from his lips. "'See?' said the landlord. This lady came last night by the diligence with her maid, doubtless a great lady, for she must have a private sitting-room.

She was Madame the Baroness de Roder, said the French maid, and was difficult to please in the matter of supper in a sleeping-room. She went to bed well, though fatigued, her maid left her. I beg to be allowed to sleep in her room, as we were in a strange inn of the character of which we knew nothing, but she would not let me. My mistress was such a great lady, and slept with my surrogate. servants, continued the landlord. This morning we thought Madame was still slumbering, but when eight, nine, ten, and near eleven o'clock came, I bade her maid, use my paskey, and enter her room. The door was not locked, only closed, and here she was found. Dead is she not, monsieur, with her face down on her pillow and her beautiful hair all scattered wild, she would never

let me tie it up, saying it made her head ache. Such hair, said the way to made, lifting up a long golden tress and letting it fall again. I remembered Amant's words the night before and crept close up to her. Meanwhile, the doctor was examining the body underneath the bedclothes, which the landlord until now had not allowed to be disarranged. The surgeon drew out his hand, all bathed and stained with blood, and holding up a short, sharp knife with a piece of paper fastened round it. "'Here has been foul play,' he said. the deceased lady has been murdered. This dagger was aimed straight at her heart.

Then putting on his spectacles, he read the writing on the bloody paper, dimmed and horribly obscured as it was. Numero One. And see the chauffeur, Zauvange. Let us go, said I to Amant. Oh, let us leave this horrible place. Wait a little, said she, only a few minutes more. It will be better. immediately the voices of all proclaimed their suspicions of the cavalier who had arrived last the night before he had they said made so many inquiries about the young lady whose supercilious conduct all in the salemongi had been discussing on his entrance they were talking about her as we left the room he must have come in directly afterwards and not until he had learnt all about her had he spoken of the business which necessitated his departure at dawn of day and made his arrangements with both landlainly Lord and Osler for the possession of the keys of the stable in poor croucher. In short, there was no doubt as to the murderer, even before the arrival of the legal functionary who had been sent for by the surgeon. But the word on the paper chilled everyone with terror. La Chauphue? Who were they? No one knew. Some of the gang might even then be in the room over hearing and noting down fresh objects for vengeance. In Germany I had heard little of this terrible gang, and I had paid no greater heed to the stories related once or twice about them in Karrles-Roo than one does to tales about ogres.

But here, in their very haunts, I learned the full amount of the terror they inspired. No one would be legally responsible for any evidence criminating the murderer. The public prosecutor shrank from the duties of his office. What do I say? Neither a mont nor I, knowing far more of the actual guilt of the man who had killed that poor sleeping young lady durst breathe a word. We appeared to be wholly ignorant of everything, we who might have told so much. But how could we? We were broken down with terrific anxiety and fatigue, with the knowledge that we, above all, were doomed victims,

and that the blood, heavily dripping from the bedclothes onto the floor, was dripping thus out of the poor dead body, because, when living, she had been mistaken for me. At length, Amont went up to the landlord and asked permission to leave his inn, doing all openly and humbly, so as took sight neither ill-will nor suspicion. Indeed, suspicion was otherwise directed, and he willingly gave us leave to depart. A few days afterwards we were across the Rhine, in Germany, making our way towards Frankfurt, but still keeping our disguises, and Amant still working at her trade. On the way, we met a young man, a wandering journeyman from Heidelberg.

I knew him, although I did not choose that he should know me. I asked him as carelessly as I could how the old Miller was now. He told me he was dead. This realization of the worst apprehensions caused by his long silence shocked me inexpressibly. It seemed as though every prop gave way from under me. I had been talking to Amant only that very day. day of the safety and comfort of the home that awaited her in my father's house, of the gratitude which the old man would feel towards her, and how there, in that peaceful dwelling, far away

from the terrible land of France, she should find ease and security for all the rest of her life. All this I thought I had to promise, and even yet more had I looked for, for myself. I looked to the unburdening of my heart and conscience by telling all I knew to my best and wisest friend. I looked to his love as a sure guidance as well as comforting stay, and behold, he was gone away from me forever. I left the room hastily on hearing of the sad news from the Heidelberger. Presently Amand followed. Poor madame, said she, consoling me to the best of her ability, and then she told me, by degrees, what more she had learned respecting my home, about what she knew almost as much as I did from my frequent talks on the subject,

at La Roche and on the dreary, doleful road we had come along. She had continued the conversation after I left by asking about my brother and his wife. Of course, they lived on at the mill, but the man said, With what truth I know not, but I believed it firmly at the time, that Babetta had completely got the upper hand of my brother, who only saw through her eyes and heard with her ears, that there had been much Heidelberg gossip of late days about her sudden intimacy with a grand French gentleman who had appeared at the mill,

a relation by marriage, married, in fact, to the Miller's sister, who, by all accounts, had behaved abominably and ungratefully. But that was no reason for Babetta's extreme and sudden intimacy with him, going about everywhere with the French gentleman, and since he left, as the Heidelberger said, he knew for a fact, corresponding with him constantly. Yet her husband saw no harm in it at all, seemingly, though, to be sure, he was so out of spirits what with his father's death in the news of his sister's infamy that he hardly knew how to hold up his head now said amant all this proves that monsieur delatorale has suspected that you would go back to the nest in which you were reared

and that he has been there and found that you have not yet returned but probably he still imagines that you will do so and has accordingly engaged your sister-in-law as a kind of informant madame has said that her sister-in-law bore her no extreme good-will and that a defamatory story he has got the start of us in spreading will not tend to increase the favor in which your sister-in-law holds you no doubt the assassin was retracing his steps when we met him near forbach and having heard of the poor german lady with her french maid and her pretty blond complexion he followed her if madame will still be guided by me and my child i beg of you still to trust me said amant breaking out of her respectful first formality into the way of talking more natural to those who had shared and escaped from common dangers, more natural too, where the speaker was conscious of a power of protection which the other did not possess. We will go on to Frankfurt and lose ourselves, for a time, at least, in the numbers of people who throng a great town. And you have told me that Frankfurt is a great town. We will still be husband and wife. We will take a small lodging, and you shall housekeep and live indoors. I, as the rougher and the more alert, will continue my father's trade, and seek work at the tailor's shops. I could think of no better plan, so we followed this out. In a back street at Frankfurt,

we found two furnished rooms to let on a sixth story. The one we entered had no light from day. A dingy lamps swung perpetually from the ceiling, and from that, or from the open door leading into the bedroom beyond, came our only light. The bedroom was more cheerful, but very small. Such as it was, it almost exceeded our possible means. The money from the sale of my ring was almost exhausted, and Amant was a stranger in the place, speaking only French, moreover, and the good Germans were hating the French people right heartily. However, we succeeded better than our hopes,

and even laid by a little against the time of my confinement. I never stirred abroad and saw no one, and Amant's want of knowledge of German kept her in a state of comparative isolation. At length my child was born, my poor, worse than fatherless child. It was a girl, as I had prayed for. I had feared lest a boy might have something of the tiger nature of its father, but a girl seemed all my own, and yet not all my own, for the faithful Amant's delight and glory in the babe almost exceeded mine,

an outward show it certainly did. We had not been able to afford any attendance beyond what an neighboring sage femme could give, and she came frequently bringing in with her a little store of gossip, and wonderful tales culled out of her own experience every time. One day she began to tell me about a great lady in whose service her daughter had lived as a scullion, or some such thing. Such a beautiful lady, with such a handsome husband. But grief comes to the palace as well as to the garret, and why or wherefore no one knew, but somehow the Baron de Rolder must have incurred the vengeance of the terrible chauffeurs, for not many months ago, as Madame was going to see her relations in Alsace, she was stabbed

dead as she lay in bed at some hotel on the road. Had I not seen it in the Gazette? Had I not heard? Why? She had been told that as far off as Lyon, there were placards offering a heavy reward on the part of the Baron de Roder for information respecting the murderer of his wife. But no one could help him. For all who could bear evidence were in such terror of the chauffeur, there were hundreds of them she had been told rich and poor great gentlemen and peasants all lead together by most frightful oaths to hunt to the death anyone who bore witness against them so that even they who survived the tortures to which the chauffeur subjected many of the people whom they plundered dared not to recognize them again would not dare even did they see them at the bar of a court of justice for if one were condemned were there not hundreds sworn to avenge his death death? I told all this to Amand, and we began to fear that if Monsieur de La Torrelle or Lefive or any of the gang at La Roche had seen these placards, they would know that the poor lady stabbed by the former was the Baroness de Roeder, and that they would set forth again in search

of me. This fresh apprehension told of my health and impeded my recovery. We had so little money we could not call in a physician, at least not one in established practice. But Amand found out a young doctor for whom, indeed, she had sometimes worked, and offering to pay him in kind, she brought him to see me, her sick wife. He was very gentle and thoughtful, though, like ourselves, very poor. But he gave much time in consideration to the case, saying once to Amand that he saw my constitution had experienced some severe shock from which it was probable that my nerves would never entirely recover. By and by I shall name this doctor, and then you will know better than I can describe his character.

I grew strong in time, stronger at least. I was able to work a little at home, and to send myself and my baby at the garret window in the roof. It was all the air I dared to take. I constantly wore the disguise I had first set out with, as constantly had I renewed the disfiguring dye which changed my hair in complexion. But the perpetual state of terror in which I had been during the whole month succeeding my escape from La Roche made me loath the idea of ever again walking in the open daylight exposed to the sight in recognition of every passer-by

in vain Amant reasoned in vain the doctor urged docile in every other thing in this I was obstinate I would not stir out one day Amant returned from her work full of news some of it good some such as to cause his apprehension the good news was this the master for whom she worked as journeyman was going to send her with some others to a great house at the other side of frankfort where there were to be private theatricals and where many new dresses and much alteration of old ones would be required the tailors employed were all to stay at this house until the day of representation was over as it was at some distance from the town and no one could tell when their work would be ended but the pay was to be proportionally good the other thing she had to say was this. She had that day met the traveling jeweler to whom she and I had sold my ring. It was a rather

peculiar one given to me by my husband. We had felt at the time that it might be the means of tracing us, but we were penniless and starving, and what else could we do? She had seen that this Frenchman had recognized her at the same instance that she did him, and she thought at the same time that there was a gleam of more than common intelligence in his face as he did so. This idea had been confirmed by his following her for some way on the other side of the street, but she had evaded him with her better knowledge of the town, and the increasing darkness of the night. Still, it was well that she was going to such a distance from our dwelling on the next day, and she had brought me in a stock of provisions, begging me to keep within doors, with a strange kind of fearful oblivion

of the fact that I had never set foot beyond the threshold of the house since I had first entered it, scarce ever ventured down the stairs. But although my poor, my dear, very faithful Amant was like one possessed that last night, she spoke continually of the dead, which is a bad sign for the living. She kissed you. Yes, it was you, my daughter, my darling, whom I bore beneath my bosom away from the fearful castle of your father. I call him so for the first time. I must call him so once again before I have done. Amant kissed you, sweet baby, blessed little comforter, as if she could never leave off, and then she went away, alive. Two days, three days passed away. That third evening I was sitting within my bolted doors, you asleep on your pillow by my side, when a step came up the

stair, and I knew it must be for me, for hours were the topmost rooms. Someone knocked. I held my very breath, but someone spoke, and I knew it was good Dr. Voss. Then I crept to the door and answered, "'Are you alone?' asked I. "'Yes,' said he, in a still lower voice. "'Let me in.' I let him in, and he was as alert as I in bolting and barring the door. Then he came and whispered to me his doleful tale. He had come from the hospital in the opposite quarter of the town, the hospital which he visited. He should have been with me sooner, but he had feared lest he should be watched. He had come from Amant's deathbed. Her fears of the jeweler were too well-founded. She had left the house where she was employed that morning, to transact some errand connected

with her work in the town. She must have been followed, and dogged on her way back through the solitary woodpaths. For some of the wood rangers belonging to the great house had found her there stabbed to death but not dead with a poignard again plunged through the fatal writing once more but this time with the word un underlined so as to show that the assassin was aware of his precious mistake numero one an si le chefeufels they had carried her to the house and given her restoratives till she had recovered the feeble use of her speech but oh faithful dear friend and sister even then she remembered me and refused to tell what no one else among her fellow workmen knew, where she lived, or with whom. Life was ebbing away fast, and they had no resource but to carry her to the nearest hospital, where, of course, the fact of her sex was made known. Fortunately, both for her and for me, the doctor in attendance, was the very Dr. Voss, whom we already knew. To him, while awaiting

her confessor, she told enough to enable him to understand the position in which I was left. before the priest had heard half her tale, Amant was dead. Dr. Voss told me he had made all sorts of detour, and waited thus late at night for fear of being watched and followed. But I do not think he was. At any rate, as I afterwards learned from him, the Baron Roder, on hearing of the similitude of this murder with that of his wife in every particular,

made such a search after the assassins that, although they were not discovered, they were compelled to take flight for the time. I can hardly tell you now by what arguments Dr. Voss, at first merely my benefactor, sparing me a portion of his small modicum, at length persuaded me to become his wife. His wife, he called it, I called it, for we went through the religious ceremony too much slighted at the time, and as we were both Lutherans a Monsieur de Latterel had pretended to be of the reformed religion, a divorce from the latter would have been easily procurable by German law,

both ecclesiastical and legal, could we have summoned so fearful a man into any court. The good doctor took me and my child by stealth to his modest dwelling, and there I lived in the same deep refinement, never seen the full light of day, although when the dye had once passed away from my face, my husband did not wish me to renew it. There was no need. My yellow hair was gray. My complexion was ashen-colored. No creature could have recognized the fresh-colored, bright-haired young woman of eighteen months before. The few people whom I saw knew me only as Madame Voss, a widow much older than himself whom Dr. Voss had secretly married. They called me the gray woman. He made me give you his surname, till now you have known no other father, while he lived

you needed no father's love. Once only, only once more, did the old terror come upon me. For some reason which I forget, I broke through my usual custom and went to the window of my room for some purpose, either to shut or to open it. Looking out into the street for an instance, I was fascinated by the sight of Monsieur de la Torrelle, gay, young, elegant as ever, walking along on the opposite side of the street. The noise I had made with the window caused him to look up. He saw me, an old grey woman, and he did not recognize me. Yet it was not three years since we had parted, and his eyes were keen and dreadful like those of the links. I told Monsieur Voss on his return home, and he tried to cheer me, but the shock I've seen Monsieur deleterrelle had been too terrible

for me. I was ill for long months afterwards. Once again I saw him, dead. He and Lefiv were at last caught, hunted down by the Bounder and the Rotor in some of their crimes. Dr. Foss had heard of their arrest, their condemnation, their death. But he never said a word to me until one day he bade me show him that I loved him by my obedience and my trust. He took me a long carriage journey, where, too, I know not, for we never spoke of that day again. I was led through a prison into a closed courtyard, wear, decently draped in the last robes of death, concealing the marks of decapitation, le Monsieur de Laterale, and two or three others, whom I had known at Le Roche.

After that conviction, Dr. Voss tried to persuade me to return to a more natural mode of life, and to go out more. But although I sometimes complied with his wish, yet the old terror was ever strong upon me, and he, seeing what an effort it was, gave up urging me at last. You know all the rest. How we both mourned bitterly the loss of that dear husband and father. For such I will call him ever. And as such you must consider him, my child, after this one revelation is over.

Why has it been made, you ask? For this reason, my child. The lover whom you have only known as Monsieur Lebrun, a French artist, told me but yesterday his real name, dropped because the bloodthirsty, Republicans might consider it as too aristocratic. It is Maurice de Posse. End of Portion 3. End of the Grey Woman by Elizabeth Clegghorn Gaskell.