"Hark! what a shriek was that of fear intense,
Of horror and amazement!
What fearful struggle to the door and thence
With mazy doubles to the grated casement!"
An hour after the departure of Capitola, Colonel Le Noir returned to
the Hidden House and learned from his man David that upon the preceding
evening a young girl of whose name he was ignorant had sought shelter
from the storm and passed the night at the mansion.
Now, Colonel Le Noir was extremely jealous of receiving strangers under
his roof, never, during his short stay at the Hidden House, going out
into company, lest he should be obliged in return to entertain
visitors. And when he learned that a strange girl had spent the night
beneath his roof, he frowningly directed that Dorcas should be sent to
him.
When his morose manager made her appearance he harshly demanded the
name of the young woman she had dared to receive beneath his roof.
Now, whether there is any truth in the theory of magnetism or not, it
is certain that Dorcas Knight--stern, harsh, resolute woman that she
was toward all others--became as submissive as a child in the presence
of Colonel Le Noir.
At his command she gave him all the information he required, not even
withholding the fact of Capitola's strange story of having seen the
apparition of the pale-faced lady in her chamber, together with the
subsequent discovery of the loss of her ring.
Colonel Le Noir sternly reprimanded his domestic manager for her
neglect of his orders and dismissed her from his presence.
The remainder of the day was passed by him in moody thought. That
evening he summoned his son to a private conference in the parlor--an
event that happily delivered poor Clara Day from their presence at her
fireside.
That night Clara, dreading lest at the end of their interview they
might return to her society, retired early to her chamber where she sat
reading until a late hour, when she went to bed and found transient
forgetfulness of trouble in sleep.
She did not know how long she had slept when she was suddenly and
terribly awakened by a woman's shriek sounding from the room
immediately overhead, in which, upon the night previous, Capitola had
slept.
Starting up in bed, Clara listened.
The shriek was repeated--prolonged and piercing--and was accompanied by
a muffled sound of struggling that shook the ceiling overhead.
Instinctively springing from her bed, Clara threw on her dressing-gown
and flew to the door; but just as she turned the latch to open it she
heard a bolt slipped on the outside and found herself a prisoner in her
own chamber.