’Not there?  Who said she was there? I didn’t.  If you can see anythink there besides a bed an’ a quilt, you’ve got eyes as can make picturs out o’ nothink, same as my darter’s eyes could make ’em, pore dear.’

‘Ah, what do you mean?’ I cried, leaping to the side of the mattress, upon which I now saw that no dead form was lying.

For a moment a flash of joy as dazzling as a fork of lightning seemed to strike through my soul and turn my blood into a liquid fire that rose and blinded my eyes.

‘Not dead,’ I cried; ’no, no, no!  The pitiful heavens would have rained blood and tears at such a monstrous tragedy.  She is not dead—­not dead after all!  The hideous dream is passing.’

’Oh, ain’t she dead, pore dear?—­ain’t she?  She’s dead enough for one,’ said the woman; ’but ’ow can she be there on that mattress, when she’s buried, an’ the prayers read over her, like the darter of the most ’spectable mother as ever lived in Primrose Court!  That’s what the neighbours say o’ me.  The most ’spectable mother as ever—­’

‘Buried!’ I said, ‘who buried her?’

‘Who buried her?  Why the parish, in course.’

Despair then again seemed to send a torrent of ice-water through my veins.  But after a time the passionate desire to see her body leapt up within my heart.

At this moment Wilderspin, who had evidently followed me with remarkable expedition, came upstairs and stood by my side.

‘I must go and see the grave,’ I said to him.  ’I must see her face once more.  I must petition the Home Secretary.  Nothing can and nothing shall prevent my seeing her—­no, not if I have to dig down to her with my nails.’

‘An’ who the dickens are you as takes on so about my darter?’ said the woman, holding the candle to my face.

‘Drunken brute!’ said I.  ‘Where is she buried?’

‘Well, I’m sure!’ said the woman in a mincing, sarcastic voice.  ’How werry unperlite you is all at wonst! how werry rude you speaks to such a werry ’spectable party as I am!  You seem to forgit who I am.  Ain’t I the goddess as likes to ’ave ‘er little joke, an’ likes to wet both eyes, and as plays sich larks with her flummeringeroes and drumming-dairies an’ ring-tailed monkeys an’ men?’

When I saw the creature whip up the quilt from the mattress, and, holding it over her head like a veil, leer hideously in imitation of Cyril’s caricature, a shudder went again through my frame—­a strange kind of dementia came upon me; my soul again seemed to leave my body—­seemed to be lifted through the air and beyond the stars, crying, in agony, ’Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?’ Yet all the while, though my soul seemed fleeing through infinite space, where a pitiless universe was waltzing madly round a ball of cruel fire—­all the while I was acutely conscious of looking down upon the dreadful dream-world below, looking down into a frightful garret where a dialogue between two dream-figures was going on—­a dialogue between Wilderspin and the woman, each word of which struck upon my ears like a sharp-edged flint, though it seemed millions of miles away.