Johnny Ludlow, Fifth Series

On the Monday evening Mrs. Fennel had another desperate fright. She went to take tea with an elderly lady and her daughter, Mrs. and Miss Lambert, bidding Flore to come for her at half-past nine o’clock. Half-past nine came, but no Flore; ten o’clock came, and then Mrs. Fennel set off alone, supposing Flore had misunderstood her and would be found waiting for her at home. The moonlit streets were crowded with promenaders returning from their summer evening walk upon the pier.

Nancy rang the bell; but it was not answered. She had her latch-key in her pocket, but preferred to be admitted, and she rang again. No one came. “Flore must have dropped asleep in the kitchen,” she petulantly thought, and drew out her key.

“Flore!” she called out, pushing the door back. “Flore, where are you?”

Flore apparently was nowhere, very much to the dismay of Mrs. Fennel. She would have to go in alone, all down the dark passage, and wake her up. Leaving the door wide open, she advanced in the dark with cautious steps, the old terror full upon her.

The kitchen was dark also, so far as fire or candlelight went, but a glimmer of moonlight shone in at the window. “Are you not here, Flore?” shivered Nancy. But there was no response.

Groping for the match-box on the mantel-shelf over the stove, and not at once finding it, Nancy suddenly took up an impression that some one was standing in the misty rays of the moon. Gazing attentively, it seemed to assume the shadowy form of Lavinia. And with a shuddering cry Nancy Fennel fell down upon the brick floor of the kitchen.

XVI.

It was a lovely summer’s day, and Madame Carimon’s neat little slip of a kitchen was bright and hot with the morning sun. Madame, herself, stood before the paste-board, making a green-apricot tart. Of pies and tarts à la mode Anglaise, Monsieur Jules was more fond than a schoolboy; and of all tarts known to the civilized world, none can equal that of a green apricot.

Madame had put down the rolling-pin, and stood for the moment idle, looking at Flore Pamart, and listening to something that Flore was saying. Flore, whisking out of the Petite Maison Rouge a few minutes before, ostensibly to do her morning’s marketings, had whisked straight off to the Rue Pomme Cuite, and was now seated at the corner of the pastry-table, telling a story to Madame Carimon.

“It was madame’s own fault,” she broke off in her tale to remark. “Madame will give me her orders in French, and half the time I can’t understand them. She had an engagement to take tea at Madame Smith’s in the Rue Lambeau, was what I thought she said to me, and that I must present myself there at half-past nine to walk home with her. Well, madame, I went accordingly, and found nobody at home there but the bonne, Thomasine. Her master was dining out at the Sous-préfet’s, and her mistress had gone out with some more ladies to walk on the pier, as it was so fine an evening. Naturally I thought my mistress was one of the ladies, and sat there waiting for her and chatting with Thomasine. Madame Smith came in at ten o’clock, and then she said that my lady had not been there and that she had not expected her.”

“She must have gone to tea elsewhere,” observed Madame Carimon.

“Clearly, madame; as I afterwards found. It was to Madame Lambert’s, in the Rue Lothaire, that I ought to have gone. I could only go home, as madame sees; and when I arrived there I found the house-door wide open. Just as I entered, a frightful cry came from the kitchen, and there I found her dropped down on the floor, half senseless with terror. Madame, she avowed to me that she had seen Mademoiselle Lavinia standing near her in the moonlight.”

Madame Carimon took up her rolling-pin slowly before she spoke. “I know she has a fancy that she appears in the house.”

“Madame Carimon, I think she is in the house,” said Flore solemnly. And for a minute or two Madame Carimon rolled her paste in silence.

“Monsieur Fennel used to see her—I am sure he did—and now his wife sees her,” went on the woman. “I think that is the secret of his running away so much: he can’t bear the house and what is haunting it.”

“It is altogether a dreadful thing; I lie awake thinking of it,” bewailed Mary Carimon.

“But it cannot be let go on like this,” said Flore; “and that’s what has brought me running here this morning—to ask you, madame, whether anything can be done. If she is left alone to see these sights, she’ll die of it. When she got up this morning she was shivering like a leaf in the wind. Has madame noticed that she is wasting away? For the matter of that, so was Monsieur Fennel.”

Madame Carimon, beginning to line her shallow dish with paste, nodded in assent. “He ought to be here with her,” she remarked.

“Catch him,” returned Flore, in a heat. “Pardon, madame, but I must avow I trust not that gentleman. He is no good. He will never come back to stay at the house so long as there is in it—what is there. He dare not; and I would like to ask him why not. A man with the conscience at ease could not be that sort of coward. Honest men do not fly away, all scared, when they fancy they see a revenant.”

Deeming it might be unwise to pursue the topic from this point, Madame Carimon said she would go and see Mrs. Fennel in the course of the day, and Flore clattered off, her wooden shoes echoing on the narrow pavement of the Rue Pomme Cuite.

But, as Madame Carimon was crossing the Place Ronde in the afternoon to pay her visit, she met Mrs. Fennel. Of course, Flore’s communication was not to be mentioned.

“Ah,” said Madame Carimon readily, “is it you? I was coming to ask if you would like to take a walk on the pier with me. It is a lovely afternoon, and not too hot.”

“Oh, I’ll go,” said Nancy. “I came out because it is so miserable at home. When Flore went off to the fish-market after breakfast, I felt more lonely than you would believe. Mary,” dropping her voice, “I saw Lavinia last night.”

“Now I won’t listen to that,” retorted Mary Carimon, as if she were reprimanding a child. “Once give in to our nerves and fancies, there’s no end to the tricks they play us. I wish, Ann, your house were in a more lively situation, where you might sit at the window and watch the passers-by.”

“But it isn’t,” said Nancy sensibly. “It looks upon nothing but the walls.”

Walking on, they sat down upon a bench that stood back from the port, facing the harbour. Nearly opposite lay the English boat, busily loading for London. The sight made Nancy sigh.

“I wish it would bring Edwin the next time it comes in,” she said in low tones.

“When do you expect him?”

“I don’t know when,” said poor Nancy with emphasis. “Mary, I am beginning to think he stays away because he is afraid of seeing Lavinia.”

“Men are not afraid of those foolish things, Ann.”

“He is. Recollect those fits of terror he had. He used to hear her following him up and downstairs; used to see her on the landings.”

Madame Carimon found no ready answer. She had witnessed one of those fits of terror herself.

“Last night,” went on Mrs. Fennel, after a pause, “when Flore had left me and I could only shiver in my bed, and not expect to sleep, I became calm enough to ask myself why Lavinia should come back again, and what it is she wants. Can you think why, Mary?”

“Not I,” said Madame Carimon lightly. “I shall only believe she does come when she shows herself to me.”

“And I happened on the thought that, possibly, she may be wanting us to inquire into the true cause of her death. It might have been ascertained at the time, but for my stopping the action of the doctors, you know.”

“Ann, my dear, you should exercise a little common sense. I would ask you what end ascertaining it now would answer, to her, dead, or to you, living?”

“It might be seen that she could have been cured, had we only known what the malady was.”

“But you did not know; the doctors did not know. It could only have been discovered, even at your showing, after her death, not in time to save her.”

“I wish Monsieur Dupuis had come more quickly on the Monday night!” sighed Nancy. “I am always wishing it. You can picture what it was, Mary—Lavinia lying in that dreadful agony and no doctor coming near her. Edwin was gone so long—so long! He could not wake up Monsieur Dupuis. I think now that the bell was out of order.”

“Why do you think that now? Captain Fennel must have known whether the bell answered to his summons, or not.”

“Well,” returned Nancy, “this morning when Flore returned with the fish, she said I looked very ill. She had just seen Monsieur Dupuis in the Place Ronde, and she ran out again and brought him in——”

“Did you mention to him this fancy of seeing Lavinia?” hastily interrupted Madame Carimon.

“No, no; I don’t talk of that to people. Only to you and Flore; and—yes—I did tell Mrs. Smith. I let Monsieur Dupuis think I was ill with grieving after Lavinia, and we talked a little about her. I said how I wished he could have been here sooner on the Monday night, and that my husband had rung several times before he could arouse him. Monsieur Dupuis said that was a mistake; he had got up and come as soon as he was called; he was not asleep at the time, and the bell had rung only once.”

“What an extraordinary thing!” exclaimed Mary Carimon. “I know your husband said he rang many times.”

“That’s why I now think the bell must have been out of order; but I did not say so to Monsieur Dupuis,” returned Nancy. “He is a kind old man, and it would grieve him: for of course we know doctors ought to keep their door-bells in order.”

Madame Carimon rose in silence, but full of thought, and they continued their walk. It was low water in the harbour, but the sun was sparkling and playing on the waves out at sea. On the pier they found Rose and Anna Bosanquet; and in chatting with them Nancy’s mood became more cheerful.

That same evening, on that same pier, Mary Carimon spoke a few confidential words to her husband. They sat at the end of it, and the beauty of the night, so warm and still, induced them to linger. The bright moon sailed grandly in the heavens and glittered upon the water that now filled the harbour, for the tide was in. Most of the promenaders had turned down the pier again, after watching out the steamer. What a fine passage she would make, and was making, cutting there so smoothly through the crystal sea!

Mary Carimon began in a low voice, though no one was near to listen and the waves could not hear her. She spoke pretty fully of a haunting doubt that lay upon her mind, as to whether Lavinia had died a natural death.

“If we make the best of it,” she concluded, “her dying in that strangely sudden way was unusual; you know that, Jules; quite unaccountable. It never has been accounted for.”

Monsieur Jules, gazing on the gentle waves as they rose and fell in the moonlight at the mouth of the harbour, answered nothing.

“He had so much to wish her away for, that man: all the money would become Nancy’s. And I’m sure there was secret enmity between them—on both sides. Don’t you see, Jules, how suspicious it all looks?”

The moonbeams, illumining Monsieur Jules Carimon’s face, showed it to be very impassive, betraying no indication that he as much as heard what his wife was talking about.

“I have not forgotten, I can never forget, Jules, the very singular Fate-reading, or whatever you may please to call it, spoken by the Astrologer Talcke last winter at Miss Bosanquet’s soirée. You were not in the room, you know, but I related it to you when we arrived home. He certainly foretold Lavinia’s death, as I, recalling the words, look upon it now. He said there was some element of evil in their house, threatening and terrible; he repeated it more than once. In their house, Jules, and that it would end in darkness; which, as every one understood, meant death: not for Mrs. Fennel; he took care to tell her that; but for another. He said the cards were more fateful than he had ever seen them. That evil in the house was Fennel.”

Still Monsieur Jules offered no comment.

“And what could be the meaning of those dreams Lavinia had about him, in which he always seemed to be preparing to inflict upon her some fearful ill, and she knew she never could and never would escape from it?” ran on Mary Carimon, her eager, suppressed tones bearing a gruesome sound in the stillness of the night. “And what is the explanation of the fits of terror which have shaken Fennel since the death, fancying he sees Lavinia? Flore said to me this morning that she is sure Lavinia is in the house.”

Glancing at her husband to see that he was at least listening, but receiving no confirmation of it by word or motion, Mary Carimon continued:

“Those dreams came to warn her, Jules. To warn her to get out of the house while she could. And she made arrangements to go, and in another day or two would have been away in safety. But he was too quick for her.”

Monsieur Jules Carimon turned now to face his wife. “Mon amie, tais toi,” said he with authority. “Such a topic is not convenable,” he added, still in French, though she had spoken in English. “It is dangerous.”

“But, Jules, I believe it to have been so.”

“All the same, and whether or no, it is not your affair, Marie. Neither must you make it so. Believe me, my wife, the only way to live peaceably ourselves in the world is to let our neighbours’ sins alone.”

XVII.

Captain Edwin Fennel was certainly in no hurry to return to Sainteville, for he did not come. Nancy, ailing, weak, wretchedly uncomfortable, wrote letter after letter to him, generally sending them over by some friend or other who might be crossing, to be put in a London letter-box, and so evade the foreign postage. Once or twice she had written to Mrs. James, telling of her lonely life and that she wanted Edwin either to take her out of the dark and desolate house, or else to come back to it himself. Captain Fennel would answer now and again, promising to come—she would be quite sure to see him on one of the first boats if she looked out for their arrival. Nancy did look, but she had not yet seen him. She was growing visibly thinner and weaker. Sainteville said how ill Mrs. Fennel was looking.

One evening at the end of July, when the London steamer was due about ten o’clock, Nancy went to watch it in, as usual, Flore attending her. The port was gay, crowded with promenaders. There had been a concert at the Rooms, and the company was coming home from it. Mrs. Fennel had not made one: latterly she had felt no spirit for amusement. Several friends met her; she did not tell them she had come down to meet her husband, if haply he should be on the expected boat; she had grown tired and half ashamed of saying that; she let them think she was only out for a walk that fine evening. There was a yellow glow still in the sky where the sun had set; the north-west was clear and bright with its opal light.

The time went on; the port became deserted, excepting a few passing stragglers. Ten o’clock had struck, eleven would soon strike. Flore and her mistress, tired of pacing about, sat down on one of the benches facing the harbour. One of two young men, passing swiftly homewards from the pier, found himself called to.

“Charley! Charley Palliser!”

Charles turned, and recognized Mrs. Fennel. Stepping across to her, he shook hands.

“What do you think can have become of the boat?” she asked. “It ought to have been in nearly an hour ago.”

“Oh, it will be here shortly,” he replied. “The boat often makes a slow passage when there’s no wind. What little wind we have had to-day has been dead against it.”

“As I’ve just said to madame,” put in Flore, always ready to take up the conversation. “Mr. Charles knows there’s no fear it has gone down, though it may be a bit late.”

“Why, certainly not,” laughed Charley. “Are you waiting here for it, Mrs. Fennel?”

“Ye—s,” she answered, but with hesitation.

“And as it’s not even in sight yet, madame had much better go home and not wait, for the air is getting chilly,” again spoke Flore.

“We can’t see whether it’s in sight or not,” said her mistress. “It is dark out at sea.”

“Shall I wait here with you, Mrs. Fennel?” asked Charley in his good nature.

“Oh no, no; no, thank you,” she answered quickly. “If it does not come in soon, we shall go home.”

He wished them good-night, and went onwards.

“She is hoping the boat may bring that mysterious brute, Fennel,” remarked Charles to his companion.

“Brute, you call him?”

“He is no better than one, to leave his sick wife alone so long,” responded Charles in hearty tones. “She has picked up an idea, I hear, that the house is haunted, and shakes in her shoes in it from morning till night.”

The two watchers sat on, Flore grumbling. Not for herself, but for her mistress. A sea-fog was rising, and Flore thought madame might take cold. Mrs. Fennel wrapped her light fleecy shawl closer about her chest, and protested she was quite hot. The shawl was well enough for a warm summer’s night, but not for a cold sea-fog. About half-past eleven there suddenly loomed into view through the mist the lights of the steamer, about to enter the harbour.

“There she is!” exultingly cried Nancy, who had been shivering inwardly for some time past, and doing her best not to shiver outwardly for fear of Flore. “And now, Flore, you go home as quickly as you can and make a fire in the salon to warm us. I’m sure he will need one—at sea in this cold fog.”

“If he is come,” mentally returned Flore in her derisive heart. She had no faith in the return of Monsieur Fennel by any boat, a day or a night one. But she needed no second prompting to hasten away; was too glad to do it.

Poor Nancy waited on. The steamer came very slowly up the port, or she fancied so; one must be cautious in a fog; and it seemed to her a long time swinging round and settling itself into its place. Then the passengers came on shore one by one, Nancy standing close to look at them. There were only about twenty in all, and Captain Fennel was not one of them. With misty eyes and a rising in her throat and spiritless footsteps, Nancy arrived at her home, the Petite Maison Rouge. Flore had the fire burning in the salon; but Nancy was too thoroughly chilled for any salon fire to warm her.

The cold she caught that night stuck to her chest. For some days afterwards she was very ill indeed. Monsieur Dupuis attended her, and brought his son once or twice, Monsieur Henri. Nancy got up again, and was, so to say, herself once more; but she did not get up her strength.

She would lie on the sofa in the salon those August days, which were very hot ones, too languid to get off it. Friends would call in to see her; Major and Mrs. Smith, the Miss Bosanquets, the Lamberts, and so on. Madame Carimon was often there. They would ask her why she did not “make an effort” and sit up and occupy herself with a book or a bit of work, or go out a little; and Nancy’s answer was nearly always the same—she would do all that when the weather was somewhat cooler. Charley Palliser was quite a constant visitor. An English damsel, who was casting a covetous eye to Charles, though she might have spared herself the pains, took a fit of jealousy and said one might think sick Nancy Fennel was his sweetheart, going there so often. Charley rarely went empty-handed either. Now it would be half-a-dozen nectarines in their red-ripe loveliness, now some choice peaches, then a bunch of hot-house grapes, “purple and gushing,” and again an amusing novel just out in England.

“Mary, she is surely dying!”

The sad exclamation came from Stella Featherston. She and Madame Carimon, going in to take tea at the Petite Maison Rouge, had been sent by its mistress to her chamber above to take off their bonnets. The words had broken from Stella the moment they were alone.

“Sometimes I fear it myself,” replied Madame Carimon. “She certainly grows weaker instead of stronger.”

“Does any doctor attend her?”

“Monsieur Dupuis; a man of long experience, kind and clever. I was talking to him the other day, and he as good as said his skill and care seemed to avail nothing: were wasted on her.”

“Is it consumption?”

“I think not. She caught a dreadful cold about a month ago through being out in a night fog, thinly clad; and there’s no doubt it left mischief behind; but it seems to me that she is wasting away with inward fever.”

“I should get George to run over to see her, if I were you, Mary,” remarked Stella. “French doctors are very clever, I believe, especially as surgeons; but for an uncertain case like this they don’t come up to the English. And George knows her constitution.”

They went down to the salon, Mary Carimon laughing a little at the remark. Stella Featherston had not been long enough in France to part with her native prejudices. The family with whom she lived in Paris had journeyed to Sainteville for a month for what they called “les eaux,” and Stella accompanied them. They were in lodgings on the port.

Mrs. Fennel seemed more like her old self that evening than she had been for some time past. The unexpected presence of her companion of early days changed the tone of her mind and raised her spirits. Stella exerted all her mirth, talked of their doings in the past, told of Buttermead’s doings in the present. Nancy was quite gay.

“Do you ever sing now, Stella?” she suddenly asked.

“Why, no,” laughed Stella, “unless I am quite alone. Who would care to hear old ditties sung without music?”

“I should. Oh, Stella, sing me a few!” urged the invalid, her tone quite imploring. “It would bring the dear old days back to me.”

Stella Featherston had a most melodious voice, but she did not play. It was not unusual in those days for girls to sing without any accompaniment, as Stella had for the most part done.

“Have you forgotten your Scotch songs, Stella?” asked Mary Carimon.

“Not I; I like them best of all,” replied Miss Featherston. And without more ado she broke into “Ye banks and braes.”

It was followed by “The Banks of Allan Water,” and others. Flore stole to the parlour-door, and thought she had never heard so sweet a singer. Last of all, Stella began a quaint song that was more of a chant than anything else, low and subdued:

A feeling of despair ran through the whole words; and the tears were running down Ann Fennel’s hectic cheeks as the melody died away in a plaintive silence.

“It is what I shall never see again, Stella,” she murmured—“the green fields of our home; or hear the tongues of all the dear ones there. In my dreams, sometimes, I am at Selby Court, light-hearted and happy, as I was before I left it for this ‘stranger land.’ Woe’s me, also, Stella!”

And now I come into the story—I, Johnny Ludlow. For what I have told of it hitherto has not been from any personal knowledge of mine, but from diaries, and from what Mary Carimon related to me, and from Featherston. It may be regarded as singular that I should have been, so to say, present at its ending, but that I was there is as true as anything I ever wrote. The story itself is true in all its chief facts; I have already said that; and it is true that I saw the close of it.

XVIII.

To say that George Featherston, Doctor-in-ordinary at Buttermead, felt as if he were standing on his head instead of his heels, would not in the least express his mental condition as he stood in his surgery that September afternoon and read a letter, just delivered, from his sister, Madame Carimon.

“Wants me to go to Sainteville to see Ann Preen; thinks she will die if I refuse, for the French doctors can do nothing for her!” commented Featherston, staring at the letter in intense perplexity, and then looking off it to stare at me.

I wonder whether anything in this world happens by chance? In the days and years that have gone by since, I sometimes ask myself whether that did: that I should be at that particular moment in Featherston’s surgery. Squire Todhetley was staying with Sir John Whitney for partridge shooting. He had taken me with him, Tod being in Gloucestershire; and on this Friday afternoon I had run in to say “How-d’ye-do” to Featherston.

“Sainteville!” repeated he, quite unable to collect his senses. “Why, I must cross the water to get there!”

I laughed. “Did you think Sainteville would cross to you, sir?”

“Bless me! just listen to this,” he went on, reading parts of the letter aloud for my benefit. “‘It is a dreadful story, George; I dare not enter into details here. But I may tell you this much: that she is dying of fright as much as of fever—or whatever it may be that ails her physically. I am sure it is not consumption, though some of the people here think it is. It is fright and superstition. She lives in the belief that the house is haunted: that Lavinia’s ghost walks in it.’”

“Now what on earth can Mary mean by that?” demanded the doctor, looking off to ask me. “Ann Preen’s wits must have left her. And Mary’s too, to repeat so nonsensical a thing.”

Turning to the next page of the letter, Featherston read on.

“‘To see her dying by inches before my eyes, and not make any attempt to, save her is what I cannot reconcile myself to, George. I should have it on my conscience afterwards. I think there is this one chance for her: that you, who have attended her before and must know her constitution, would see her now. You might be able to suggest some remedy or mode of treatment which would restore her. It might even be that the sight of a home face, of her old home doctor, would do for her what the strange doctors here cannot do. No one knows better than you how marvellously in illness the mind influences the body.’

“True enough,” broke off Featherston. “But it seems to me there must be something mysterious about the sickness.” He read on again.

“‘Stella, who is here, was the first to suggest your seeing her, but it was already exercising my thoughts. Do come, George! the sooner the better. I and Jules will be delighted to have you with us.’”

Featherston slowly folded up the letter. “What do you think of all this, Johnny Ludlow? Curious, is it not?”

“Very. Especially that hint about the house being haunted by the dead-and-gone Miss Preen.”

“I have never heard clearly what it was Lavinia Preen died of,” observed Featherston, leaving, doctor-like, the supernatural for the practical. “Except that she was seized with some sort of illness one day and died the next.”

“But that’s no reason why her ghost should walk. Is it?”

“Nancy’s imagination,” spoke Featherston slightingly. “She was always foolish and fanciful.”

“Shall you go to Sainteville, Mr. Featherston?”

He gave his head a slow, dubious shake, but did not speak.

“Don’t I wish such a chance were offered to me!”

Featherston sat down on a high stool, which stood before the physic shelves, to revolve the momentous question. And by the time he took over it, he seemed to find it a difficult task.

“One hardly likes to refuse the request, put as Mary writes it,” remarked he presently. “Yet I don’t see how I can go all the way over there; or how I could leave my patients here. What a temper some of them would be in!”

“They wouldn’t die of it. It would be a rare holiday for you. Set you up in health for a year to come.”

“I’ve not had a holiday since that time at Pumpwater,” he rejoined dreamily; “when I went over for a day or two to see poor John Whitney. You remember it, Johnny; you were there.”

“Ay, I remember it.”

“Not that this is a question of a holiday for me or no holiday, and I wonder you should put it so, Johnny Ludlow; it turns upon Ann Preen. Ann Fennel, that’s to say. If I thought I could do her any good, and those French doctors can’t, why, I suppose I ought to make an effort to go.”

“To be sure. Make one also to take me with you!”

“I dare say!” laughed Featherston. “What would the Squire say to that?”

“Bluster a bit, and then see it was the very thing for me, and ask what the cost would be. Mr. Featherston, I shall be ready to start when you are. Please let me go!”

Of course I said this half in jest. But it turned out to be earnest. Whether Featherston feared he might get lost if he crossed the sea alone, I can’t say; but he said I might put the question to the Squire if I liked, and he would see him later and second it.

Featherston did another thing. He carried Mary Carimon’s letter that evening to Selby Court. Colonel Selby was staying with his brother for a week’s shooting. Mr. Selby, a nervous valetudinarian, would not have gone out with a gun if bribed to it, but he invited his friends to do so. They had just finished dinner when Featherston arrived; the two brothers, and a short, dark, younger man with a rather keen but good-natured face and kindly dark eyes. He was introduced as Mr. David Preen, and turned out to be a cousin, more or less removed, of all the Preens and all the Selbys you have ever heard of, dead or living.

Featherston imparted his news to them, and showed his sister’s letter. It was pronounced to be a very curious letter, and was read over more than once. Colonel Selby next told them what he knew and what he thought of Edwin Fennel: how he had persistently schemed to get the quarterly money of the two ladies into his own covetous hands, and what a shady sort of individual he was believed to be. Mr. Selby, nervous at the best of times, let alone the worst, became painfully impressed: he seemed to fear poor Nancy was altogether in a hornet’s nest, and gave an impulsive opinion that some one of the family ought to go over with Featherston to look into things.

“Lavinia can’t have been murdered, can she?” cried he, his thoughts altogether confused; “murdered by that man for her share of the money? Why else should her ghost come back?”

“Don’t make us laugh, Paul,” said the colonel to his brother. “Ghosts are all moonshine. There are no such things.”

“I can tell you that there are, William,” returned the elder. “Though mercifully the power to see them is accorded to very few mortals on earth. Can you go with Mr. Featherston to look into this strange business, William?”

“No,” replied the colonel, “I could not possibly spare the time. Neither should I care to do it. Any inquiry of that kind would be quite out of my line.”

“I will go,” quietly spoke David Preen.

“Do so, David,” said Mr. Selby eagerly. “It shall cost you nothing, you know.” By which little speech, Featherston gathered that Mr. David Preen was not more overdone with riches than were many of the other Preens.

“Look into it well, David. See the doctor who attended Lavinia; see all and every one able to throw any light upon her death,” urged Mr. Selby. “As to Ann, she was lamentably, foolishly blamable to marry as she did, but she must not be left at the villain’s mercy now things have come to this pass.”

To which Mr. David Preen nodded an emphatic assent.

The Squire gave in at last. Not to my pleading—he accused me of having lost my head only to think of it—but to Featherston. And when the following week was wearing away, the exigencies of Featherston’s patients not releasing him sooner, we started for Sainteville; he, I, and David Preen. Getting in at ten at night after a boisterous passage, Featherston took up his quarters at Monsieur Carimon’s, we ours at the Hôtel des Princes.

She looked very ill. Ill and changed. I had seen Ann Preen at Buttermead when she lived there, but the Ann Preen (or Fennel) I saw now was not much like her. The once bright face was drawn and fallen in, and very nearly as long and grey as Featherston’s. Apart from that, a timid, shrinking look sat upon it, as though she feared some terror lay very near to her.

The sick have to be studied, especially when suffering from whims and fancies. So they invented a little fable to Mrs. Fennel—that Featherston and David Preen were taking an excursion together for their recreation, and the doctor had extended it as far as Sainteville to see his sister Mary; never allowing her to think that it was to see her. I was with them, but I went for nobody—and in truth that’s all I was in the matter.

It was the forenoon of the day after we arrived. David Preen had gone in first, her kinsman and distant cousin, to the Petite Maison Rouge, paving the way, as it were, for Featherston. We went in presently. Mrs. Fennel sat in a large armchair by the salon fire, wrapped in a grey shawl; she was always cold now, she told us; David Preen sat on the sofa opposite, talking pleasantly of home news. Featherston joined him on the sofa, and I sat down near the table.

Oh, she was glad to see us! Glad to see us all. Ours were home faces, you see. She held my hands in hers, and the tears ran down her face, betraying her state of weakness.

“You have not been very well of late, Mary tells me,” Featherston said to her in a break of the conversation. “What has been the matter?”

“I—it came on from a bad cold I caught,” she answered with some hesitation. “And there was all the trouble about Lavinia’s death. I could not get over the grief.”

“Well, I must say you don’t look very robust,” returned Featherston, in a half-joking tone. “I think I had better take you in hand whilst I am here, and set you up.”

“I do not think you can set me up; I do not suppose any one can,” she replied, shaking back her curls, which fell on each side of her face in ringlets, as of old.

Featherston smiled cheerily. “I’ll try,” said he. “Some of my patients say the same when I am first called in to them; but they change their tone after I have brought back their roses. So will you; never fear. I’ll come in this afternoon and have a professional chat with you.”

That settled, they went on with Buttermead again; David Preen giving scraps and revelations of the Preen and Selby families; Featherston telling choice items of the rural public in general. Mrs. Fennel’s spirits went up to animation.

“Shall you be able to do anything for her, sir?” I asked the doctor as we came away and went through the entry to the Place Ronde.

“I cannot tell,” he answered gravely. “She has a look on her face that I do not like to see there.”

Betrayed into confidence, I suppose, by the presence of the old friend of her girlhood, Ann Fennel related everything to Mr. Featherston that afternoon, as they sat on the sofa side by side, her hand occasionally held soothingly in his own. He assured her plainly that what she was chiefly suffering from was a disorder of the nerves, and that she must state to him explicitly the circumstances which brought it on before he could decide how to treat her for it.

Nancy obeyed him. She yearned to get well, though a latent impression lay within her that she should not do so. She told him the particulars of Lavinia’s unexpected death just when on the point of leaving Sainteville; and she went on to declare, glancing over her shoulders with frightened eyes, that she (Lavinia) had several times since then appeared in the house.

“What did Lavinia die of?” inquired the doctor at this juncture.

“We could not tell,” answered Mrs. Fennel. “It puzzled us. At first Monsieur Dupuis thought it must be inflammation brought on by a chill; but Monsieur Podevin quite put that opinion aside, saying it was nothing of the sort. He is a younger and more energetic practitioner than Monsieur Dupuis.”

“Was it never suggested that she might, in one way or another, have taken something which poisoned her?”

“Why, yes, it was; I believe Monsieur Dupuis did think so—I am sure Monsieur Podevin did. But it was impossible it could have been the case, you see, because Lavinia touched nothing either of the days that we did not also partake of.”

“There ought to have been an examination after death. You objected to that, I fancy,” continued Featherston, who had talked a little with Madame Carimon.

“True—I did; and I have been sorry for it since,” sighed Ann Fennel. “It was through what my husband said to me that I objected. Edwin thought it would be distasteful to me. He did not like the idea of it either. Being dead, he held that she should be left in reverence.”

Featherston coughed. She was evidently innocent as any lamb of suspicion against him.

“And now,” went on Mr. Featherston, “just tell me what you mean by saying you see your sister about the house.”

“We do see her,” said Nancy.

“Nonsense! You don’t. It is all fancy. When the nerves are unstrung, as yours are, they play us all sorts of tricks. Why, I knew a man once who took up a notion that he walked upon his head, and he came to me to be cured!”

“But it is seeing Lavinia’s apparition, and the constant fear of seeing it which lies upon me, that has brought on this nervousness,” pleaded Nancy. “It is to my husband, when he is here, that she chiefly appears; nothing but that is keeping him away. I have seen her only three or four times.”

She spoke quietly and simply, evidently grounded in the belief. Mr. Featherston wondered how he was to deal with this: and perhaps he was not himself so much of a sceptic in the supernatural as he thought fit to pretend. Nancy continued:

“It was to my husband she appeared first. Exactly a week after her death. No; a week after the evening she was first taken ill. He was coming upstairs to bed—I had gone on—when he suddenly fancied that some one was following him, though only he and I were in the house. Turning quickly round, he saw Lavinia. That was the first time; and I assure you I thought he would have died of it. Never before had I witnessed such mortal terror in man.”

“Did he tell you he had seen her?”

“No; never. I could not imagine what brought on these curious attacks of fright, for he had others. He put it upon his health. It was only when I saw Lavinia myself after he went to England that I knew. I knew then what it must have been.”

Mr. Featherston was silent.

“She always appears in the same dress,” continued Nancy; “a silver-grey silk that she wore at church that Sunday. It was the last gown she ever put on: we took it off her when she was first seized with the pain. And in her face there is always a sad, beseeching aspect, as if she wanted something and were imploring us to get it for her. Indeed we see her, Mr. Featherston.”

“Ah, well,” he said, perceiving it was not from this quarter that light could be thrown on the suspicious darkness of the past, “let us talk of yourself. You are to obey my orders in all respects, Mistress Nancy. We will soon have you flourishing again.”

Brave words. Perhaps the doctor half believed in them himself. But he and they received a check all too soon.

That same evening, after David Preen had left—for he went in to spend an hour at the little red house to gossip about the folks at home—Nancy was taken with a fit of shivering. Flore hastily mixed her a glass of hot wine-and-water, and then went upstairs to light a fire in the bedroom, thinking her mistress would be the better for it. Nancy, who could hear Flore moving about overhead, suddenly remembered something that she wanted brought down. Rising from her chair, she went to the door of the salon, intending to call out. A sort of side light, dim and indistinct, fell upon her as she stood in the recess at the foot of the stairs from the lamp in the salon and from the stove in the kitchen, for both doors were open.

“Flore,” she was beginning, “will you bring down my——”

And there Ann Fennel’s words ended. With a wild cry, which reached the ears of Flore and nearly startled her into fits, Mrs. Fennel collapsed. The servant came dashing downstairs, expecting to hear that the ghost had appeared again.

It was not that. Her mistress was looking wild and puzzled; and when she recovered herself sufficiently to speak, declared that she had been startled by some animal. Either a cat or a rabbit, she could not tell which, the glimpse she caught of it was so brief and slight; it had run against her legs as she was calling out.

Flore did not know what to make of this. She looked about, but neither cat nor rabbit was to be seen; and she told her mistress it could have been nothing but fancy. Mrs. Fennel thought she knew better.

“Why, I felt it and saw it,” she said. “It came right against me and ran over my feet. It seemed to be making for the passage, as if it wanted to get out by the front-door.”

We were gathered together in the salon of the Petite Maison Rouge the following morning, partly by accident. Ann Fennel, exceedingly weak and nervous, lay in bed. Featherston and Monsieur Dupuis were both upstairs. She put down her illness to the fright, which she talked of to them freely. They did not assure her it was only “nerves”—to what purpose? I waited in the salon with David Preen, and just as the doctors came down Madame Carimon came in.

David Preen seized upon the opportunity. Fearing that one so favourable might not again occur, unless formally planned, he opened the ball. Drawing his chair to the table, next to that of Madame Carimon, the two doctors sitting opposite, David Preen avowed, with straightforward candour, that he, with some other relatives, held a sort of doubt as to whether it might not have been something Miss Lavinia Preen took which caused her death; and he begged Monsieur Dupuis to say if any such doubt had crossed his own mind at the time.

The fair-faced little médecin shook his head at this appeal, as much as to say he thought that the subject was a puzzling one. Naturally the doubt had crossed him, and very strongly, he answered; but the difficulty in assuming that view of the matter lay in her having partaken solely of the food which the rest of the household had partaken of; that and nothing else. His confrère, Monsieur Podevin, held a very conclusive opinion—that she had died of poison.

David Preen drew towards him a writing-case which lay on the table, took a sheet of paper from it, and a pencil from his pocket. “Let us go over the facts quietly,” said he; “it may be we shall arrive at some decision.”

So they went over the facts, the chief speakers being Madame Carimon and Flore, who was called in. David Preen dotted down from time to time something which I suppose particularly impressed him.

Miss Preen was in perfectly good health up to that Sunday—the first after Easter. On the following Tuesday she was about to quit Sainteville for Boulogne, her home at the Petite Maison Rouge having become intolerable to her through the residence in it of Captain Fennel.

“Pardon me if I state here something which is not positively in the line of facts; rather, perhaps, in that of imagination,” said Madame Carimon, looking up. “Lavinia had gradually acquired a most painful dread of Captain Fennel. She had dreams which she could only believe came to warn her against him, in which he appeared to be threatening her with some evil that she could not escape from. Once or twice—and this I cannot in any way account for—she saw him in the house when he was not in it, not even at Sainteville——”

“What! saw his apparition?” cried Featherston. “When the man was living! Come, come, Mary, that is going too far!”

“Quelle drôle d’idée!” exclaimed the little doctor.

“He appeared to her twice, she told me,” continued Mary Carimon. “She had been spending the evening out each time; had come into the house, this house, closing the street-door behind her. When she lighted a candle at the slab, she saw him standing just inside the door, gazing at her with the same dreadful aspect that she saw afterwards in her dreams. You may laugh, George; Monsieur Dupuis, I think you are already laughing; but I fully believe that she saw what she said she did, and dreamt what she did dream.”

“But it could not have been the man’s apparition when he was not dead; and it could not have been the man himself when he was not at Sainteville,” contended Featherston.

“And I believe that it all meant one of those mysterious warnings which are vouchsafed us from our spiritual guardians in the unseen world,” added Madame Carimon, independently pursuing her argument. “And that it came to Lavinia to warn her to escape from this evil house.”

“And she did not do it,” remarked David Preen. “She was not quick enough. Well, let us go on.”

“As Lavinia came out of church, Charles Palliser ran after her to ask her to go home to dine with him and his aunt,” resumed Madame Carimon. “If she had only accepted it! The dinner here was a very simple one, and they all partook of it, including Flore——”

“And it was Flore who cooked and served it?” interrupted David Preen, looking at her.

“Mais oui, monsieur. The tart excepted; that was frangipane, and did come from the pastrycook,” added Flore, plunging into English. “Then I had my own dinner, and I had of every dish; and I drank of the wine. Miss Lavinia would give me a glass of wine on the Sunday, and she poured it out for me herself that day from the bottle of Bordeaux on their own table. Nothing was the matter with any of all that. The one thing I did not have of was the liqueur.”

“What liqueur was that?”

“It was chartreuse, I believe,” said Flore. “While I was busy removing the dinner articles from the salon, monsieur was busy at his cupboard outside there, where he kept his bottles. He came into the kitchen just as I had sat down to eat, and asked me for three liqueur glasses, which I gave to him on a plate. I heard him pour the liqueur into them, and he carried them to the ladies.”

Mr. David Preen wrote something down here.

“After that the captain went out to walk, saying he would see the English boat enter; and when I had finished washing up I carried the tea-tray to the salon-table and went home. Miss Lavinia was quite well then; she sat in her belle robe of grey silk talking with her sister. Then, when I was giving my boy Dion his collation, a tartine and a cooked apple, I was fetched back here, and found the poor lady fighting with pain for her life.”

“Did you wash those liqueur glasses?” asked Mr. Featherston.

“But yes, sir. I had taken them away when I carried in the tea-things, and washed them at once, and put them on the shelf in their places.”

“You see,” observed Monsieur Dupuis, “the ill-fated lady appears to have taken nothing that the others did not take also. I applied my remedies when I was called to her, and the following day she had, as I believed, recovered from the attack; nothing but the exhaustion left by the agony was remaining. But that night she was again seized, and I was again fetched to her. The attack was even more violent than the first one. I made a request for another doctor, and Monsieur Podevin was brought. He at once set aside my suggestion of inflammation from a chill, and said it looked to him more like a case of poison.”

“She had had nothing but slops all day, messieurs, which I made and carried to her,” put in Flore; “and when I left, at night, she was, as Monsieur le Médecin put it, ‘all well to look at.’”

“Flore did not make the arrowroot which she took later,” said Mary Carimon, taking up the narrative. “When Lavinia went up to bed, towards nine o’clock, Mrs. Fennel made her a cup of arrowroot in the kitchen——”

“And a cup for herself at the same time, as I was informed, madame,” spoke the little doctor.

“Oh yes, I know that, Monsieur Dupuis. Mrs. Fennel brought her sister’s arrowroot, when it was ready, into this room, asking her husband whether she might venture to put a little brandy into it. He sent her to ask the question of Lavinia, bidding her leave the arrowroot on the table here. She came down for it, saying Lavinia declined the brandy, carried it up to her and saw her take it. Mrs. Fennel wished her good-night and came down for her own portion, which she had left in the kitchen. Before eleven o’clock, when they were going to bed, cries were heard in Lavinia’s room; she was seized with the second attack, and—and died in it.”

“This second attack was so violent, so unmanageable,” said Monsieur Dupuis, as Mary Carimon’s voice faltered into silence, “that I feel convinced I could not have saved her had I been present when it came on. I hear that Captain Fennel says he rang several times at my door before he could arouse me. Such was not the case. I am a very light sleeper, waking, from habit, at the slightest sound. But in this case I had not had time to fall asleep when I fancied I heard the bell sound very faintly. I thought I must be mistaken, as the bell is a loud bell, and rings easily; and people who ring me up at night generally ring pretty sharply. I lay listening, and some time afterwards, not immediately, it did ring. I opened my window, saw Captain Fennel outside, and was dressed and with him in two minutes.”

“That sounds as if he did not want you to go to her too quickly, monsieur,” observed Mr. Featherston, which went, as the French have it, without saying. “And I have heard of another suspicious fact: that he put his wife up to stop the medical examination after death.”

“It amounts to this,” spoke David Preen, “according to our judgment, if anything wrong was administered to her, it was given in the glass of liqueur on the Sunday afternoon, and in the cup of arrowroot on the Monday evening. They were the only things affording an opportunity of being tampered with; and in each case the pain came on about two hours afterwards.”

Grave suspicion, as I am sure they all felt it to be. But not enough, as Featherston remarked, to accuse a man of murder. There was no proof to be brought forward, especially now that months had elapsed.

“What became of the cup which had contained the arrowroot?” inquired David Preen, looking at Flore. “Was it left in the bedroom?”

“That cup, sir, I found in a bowl of water in the kitchen, and also the other one which had been used. The two were together in the wooden bowl. I supposed Madame Fennel had put them there; but she said she had not.”

“Ah!” exclaimed David Preen, drawing a deep breath.

He had come over to look into this suspicious matter; but, as it seemed, nothing could be done. To stir in it, and fail, would be worse than letting it alone.

“Look you,” said David Preen, as he put up his note-book. “If it be true that Lavinia cannot rest now she’s dead, but shows herself here in the house, I regard it as a pretty sure proof that she was sent out of the world unjustly. But——”

“Then you hold the belief that spirits revisit the earth, monsieur,” interrupted Monsieur Dupuis, “and that revenants are to be seen?”

“I do, sir,” replied David. “We Preens see them. But I cannot stir in this matter, I was about to say, and the man must be left to his conscience.”

And so the conference broke up.

The thing which lay chiefly on hand now was to try to bring health back to Ann Fennel. It was thought well to take her out of the house for a short time, as she had such fancies about it; so Featherston gave up his room at Madame Carimon’s, and Ann was invited to move into it, whilst he joined us at the hotel. I thought her very ill, as we all did. But after her removal there, she recovered her spirits wonderfully, and went out for short walks and laughed and chatted: and when Featherston and David Preen took the boat back to return home, she went to the port to see them steam off.

“Will it be all right with her?” was the last question Mary Carimon whispered to her brother.

“I’m afraid not,” he answered. “A little time will show one way or the other. Depends somewhat, perhaps, upon how that husband of hers allows things to go on. I have done what I can, Mary; I could not do more.”

Does the reader notice that I did not include myself in those who steamed off? For I did not go. Good, genial little Jules Carimon, who was pleased to say he had always liked me much at school, invited me to make a stay at his house, if I did not mind putting up with a small bedroom in the mansarde. I did not mind it at all; it was large enough for me. Nancy was delighted. We had quite a gay time of it; and I made the acquaintance of Major and Mrs. Smith, the Misses Bosanquet and Charley Palliser, who was shortly to quit Sainteville. Charley’s impression of Mrs. Fennel was that she would quit it before he did, but in a different manner.

One fine afternoon, when we were coming off the pier, Nancy was walking between me and Mary Carimon, for she needed the support of two arms if she went far—yes, she was as weak as that—some one called out that the London boat was coming in. Turning round, we saw her gliding smoothly up the harbour. No one in these Anglo-French towns willingly misses that sight, and we drew up on the quay to watch the passengers land. There were only eight or ten of them.

Suddenly Nancy gave a great cry, which bore a sound both of fear and of gladness—“Oh, there’s Edwin!”—and the next moment began to shake her pocket-handkerchief frantically.

A thin, grey, weasel of a man, whose face I did not like, came stalking up the ladder. Yes, it was the ex-captain, Edwin Fennel.

“He has not come for her sake; he has come to grab the quarter’s money,” spoke Mary, quite savagely, in my ear. No doubt. It would be due the end of September, which was at hand.

The captain was elaborately polite; quite effusive in his greeting to us. Nancy left us and took his arm. At the turning where we had to branch off to the Rue Pomme Cuite, she halted to say good-bye.

“But you are coming back to us, are you not?” cried Madame Carimon to her.

“Oh, I could not let Edwin go home alone,” said she. “Nobody’s there but Flore, you know.”

So she went back there and then to the Petite Maison Rouge, and never came out of it again. I think he was kind to her, that man. He had sometimes a scared look upon his face, and I guessed he had been seeing sights. The man would have given his head to be off again; to remain in that haunted house must have been to him a most intolerable penance; but he had some regard (policy dictating it) for public opinion, and could not well run away from his wife in her failing health.

It was curious how quickly Nancy declined. From the very afternoon she entered the house it seemed to begin. He had grabbed the money, as Mary Carimon called it, and brought her nice and nourishing things; but nothing availed. And a fine way he must have been in, to see that; for with his wife’s death the money would go away from him for evermore.

Monsieur Dupuis, sometimes Monsieur Henry Dupuis, saw her daily; and Captain Fennel hastily called in another doctor who had the reputation of being the best in the town, next to Monsieur Podevin; one Monsieur Lamirand. Mary Carimon spent half her time there; I went in most days. It could not be said that she had any special complaint, but she was too weak to live.

In less than three weeks it was all over. The end, when it came, was quite sudden. For a day or two she had seemed so much better that we told her she had taken a turn at last. On the Thursday evening, quite late—it was between eight and nine o’clock—Madame Carimon asked me to run there with some jelly which she had made, and which was only then ready. When I arrived, Flore said she was sure her mistress would like me to go up to her room; she was alone, monsieur having stepped out.

Nancy, wrapped in a warm dressing-gown, sat by the fire in an easy-chair and a great shawl. Her fair curls were all put back under a small lace cap, which was tied at the chin with grey ribbon; her pretty blue eyes were bright. I told her what I had come for, and took the chair in front of her.

“You look so well this evening, Nancy,” I said heartily—for I had learnt to call her so at Madame Carimon’s, as they did. “We shall have you getting well now all one way.”

“It is the spurt of the candle before going out,” she quietly answered. “I have not the least pain left anywhere—but it is only that.”

“You should not say or think so.”

“But I know it; I cannot mistake my own feelings. Fancy any one, reduced as I am, getting well again!”

I am a bad one to keep up “make-believes.” Truth to say, I felt as sure of it as she did.

“And it will not be very long first. Johnny,” she went on, in a half-whisper, “I saw Lavinia to-day.”

I looked at her, but made no reply.

“I have never seen her since I came back here. Edwin has, though; I am sure of it. This afternoon at dusk I woke up out of a doze, for getting up to sit here quite exhausts me, and I was moving forward to touch the hand-bell on the table there, to let Flore know I was ready for my tea, when I saw Lavinia. She was standing over there, just in the firelight. I thought she seemed to be holding out her hand to me, as if inviting me to go to her, and on her face there was the sweetest smile of welcome; sweeter than could be seen on any face in life. All the sad, mournful, beseeching look had left it. She stood there for about a minute, and then vanished.”

“Were you very much frightened?”

“I had not a thought of fear, Johnny. It was the contrary. She looked radiantly happy; and it somehow imparted happiness to me. I think—I think,” added Nancy impressively, though with some hesitation, “that she came to let me know I am going to her. I believe I have seen her for the last time. The house has, also, I fancy; she and I will shortly go out of it together.”

What could I answer to that?

“And so it is over at last,” she murmured, more to herself than to me. “Very nearly over. The distress and the doubt, the terror and the pain. I brought it all on; you know that, Johnny Ludlow. I feel sure now that she has pardoned me. I humbly hope that God has.”

She caught up her breath with a long-drawn sigh.

“And you will give my dear love to all the old friends in England, Johnny, beginning with Mr. Featherston; he has been very kind to me; you will see them again, but I shall not. Not in this life. But we shall be together in the Life which has no ending.”

At twelve o’clock that night Nancy Fennel died. At least, it was as near twelve as could be told. Just after that hour Flore went into the room, preparatory to sitting up with her, and found her dead—just expired, apparently—with a sweet smile on her face, and one hand stretched out as if in greeting. Perhaps Lavinia had come to greet her.

We followed her to the grave on Saturday. Captain Fennel walked next the coffin—and I wondered how he liked it. I was close behind him with Monsieur Carimon. Charley Palliser came next with little Monsieur le Docteur Dupuis and Monsieur Gustave Sauvage. And we left Nancy in the cemetery, side by side with her sister.

Captain Edwin Fennel disappeared. On the Sunday, when we English were looking for him in church, he did not come—his grief not allowing him, said some of the ladies. But an English clerk in the broker’s office, hearing this, told another tale. Fennel had gone off by the boat which left the port for London the previous night at midnight.

And he did not come back again. He had left sundry debts behind him, including that owing to Madame Veuve Sauvage. Monsieur Carimon, later, undertook the payment of these at the request of Colonel Selby. It was understood that Captain Edwin Fennel had emigrated to South America. If he had any conscience at all, it was to be hoped he carried it with him. He did not carry the money. The poor little income which he had schemed for, and perhaps worse, went back to the Selbys.

And that is the story. It is a curious history, and painful in more ways than one. But I repeat that it is true.