It stirred--it moaned hoarsely; and again I
heard the chain clank close beside me--so close that it must almost
have touched me. I drew myself from it, shrinking away in loathing
and terror of the evil thing--what, I knew not, but felt that
something malignant was near.
And yet, in the extremity of my fear, I dared not speak; I was
strangely cautious to be silent, even in moving farther off; for I
had a wild hope that it--the phantom, the creature, whichever it
was--had not discovered my presence in the room. And then I
remembered all the events of the night--Lady Speldhurst's ill-
omened vaticinations, her half-warnings, her singular look as we
parted, my sister's persuasions, my terror in the gallery, the
remark that "this was the room nurse Sherrard used to talk of."
And then memory, stimulated by fear, recalled the long-forgotten
past, the ill-repute of this disused chamber, the sins it had
witnessed, the blood spilled, the poison administered by unnatural
hate within its walls, and the tradition which called it haunted.
The green room--I remembered now how fearfully the servants avoided
it--how it was mentioned rarely, and in whispers, when we were
children, and how we had regarded it as a mysterious region, unfit
for mortal habitation.
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