At the door she turned. “Goodbye, Mrs Strange. I hope they will let you come again. I hope you will do me that honour. I see no one. Or rather, I see whole roomfuls of people, but not a Christian among them.”

Arabella stepped forward, intending to shake Lady Pole’s hand and to assure her that she would gladly come again, but Sir Walter had already removed her ladyship from the room. For the second time that day Arabella was left alone in the house in Harley-street.

A bell began to toll.

Naturally she was a little surprized after all that Sir Walter had said about the bells of Mary-le-bone standing silent out of deference to Lady Pole’s illness. This bell sounded very sad and far-away and it brought before her imagination all sorts of melancholy scenes …

… bleak, wind-swept fens and moors; empty fields with broken walls and gates hanging off their hinges; a black, ruined church; an open grave; a suicide buried at a lonely crossroads; a fire of bones blazing in the twilit snow; a gallows with a man swinging from its arm; another man crucified upon a wheel; an ancient spear plunged into the mud with a strange talisman, like a little leather finger, hanging from it; a scarecrow whose black rags blew about so violently in the wind that he seemed about to leap into the grey air and fly towards you on vast black wings …

“I must beg your pardon if you have seen any thing here to disturb you,” said Sir Walter, coming suddenly back into the room.

Arabella caught hold of a chair to steady herself.

“Mrs Strange? You are not well.” He took hold of her arm and helped her sit down. “May I fetch someone? Your husband? Her ladyship’s maid?”

“No, no,” said Arabella, a little out of breath. “I want no one, nothing. I thought … I did not know you were here. That is all.”

Sir Walter stared at her in great concern. She tried to smile at him, but she was not quite sure that the smile turned out well.

He put his hands in his pockets, took them out, ran his fingers through his hair, and sighed deeply. “I dare say her ladyship has been telling you all sorts of odd tales,” he said, unhappily.

Arabella nodded.

“And hearing them has distressed you. I am very sorry for it.”

“No, no. Not at all. Her ladyship did talk a little of … of what seemed rather odd, but I did not mind it. Not in the least! I felt a little faint. But do not connect the two, I beg you! It was nothing to do with her ladyship! I had a sort of foolish idea that there was a sort of mirror before me with all sorts of strange landscapes in it and I thought I was falling into it. I suppose I must have been about to faint and your coming in just then prevented it. But it is very odd. I never did such a thing before.”