I remembered again suddenly my odd notion that she sought to keep her
present mistress here, a prisoner in this bleak and comfortless house,
and that really, in spite of her obsequious silence, she was intensely
opposed to the change of thought that had reclaimed Mabel to a happier
view of life.
All this in a passing second flashed in review before me, and I
discovered, or at any rate reconstructed, the real Mrs. Marsh. She was
decidedly in the Shadow. More, she stood in the forefront of it,
stealthily leading an assault, as it were, against The Towers and its
occupants, as though, consciously or unconsciously, she labored
incessantly to this hateful end.
I can only judge that some state of nervousness in me permitted the
series of insignificant thoughts to assume this dramatic shape, and that
what had gone before prepared the way and led her up at the head of so
formidable a procession. I relate it exactly as it came to me. My nerves
were doubtless somewhat on edge by now. Otherwise I should hardly have
been a prey to the exaggeration at all. I seemed open to so many
strange, impressions.
Nothing else, perhaps, can explain my ridiculous conversation with her,
when, for the third time that evening, I came suddenly upon the woman
half-way down the stairs, standing by an open window as if in the act of
listening.
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