When night fell, it was not a night of silver patterns
enskied, but a dark and cloudy cloak where a few stars glittered
fitfully. Miss Cornelia, at dinner, saw a bat swoop past the
window of the dining room in its scurrying flight, and narrowly
escaped oversetting her glass of water with a nervous start. The
tension of waiting--waiting--for some vague menace which might
not materialize after all--had begun to prey on her nerves. She
saw Dale off to the country club with relief--the girl looked a
little better after her nap but she was still not her normal self.
When Dale was gone, she wandered restlessly for some time between
living-room and library, now giving an unnecessary dusting to a
piece of bric-a-brac with her handkerchief, now taking a book from
one of the shelves in the library only to throw it down before
she read a page.
This house was queer. She would not have admitted it to Lizzie,
for her soul's salvation--but, for the first time in her sensible
life, she listened for creakings of woodwork, rustling of leaves,
stealthy steps outside, beyond the safe, bright squares of the
windows--for anything that was actual, tangible, not merely
formless fear.
"There's too much ROOM in the country for things to happen to you!"
she confided to herself with a shiver. "Even the night--whenever
I look out, it seems to me as if the night were ten times bigger and
blacker than it ever is in New York!"
To comfort herself she mentally rehearsed her telephone conversation
of the morning, the conversation she had not mentioned to her
household.
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