The yellow clay-cold color of her face showed a faint flush of warmth; its deathlike stillness was stirred by a touch of life.  The stony eyes, fixed as ever in their gaze, shone strangely with a dim inner lustre.  Her gray hair, so neatly arranged at other times, was in disorder under her cap.  All her movements were quicker than usual.  Something had roused the stagnant vitality in the woman—­it was working in her mind; it was forcing itself outward into her face.  The servants at Windygates, in past times, had seen these signs, and had known them for a warning to leave Hester Dethridge to herself.

Anne asked her if she had heard what had happened.

She bowed her head.

“I hope you don’t mind being disturbed?”

She wrote on her slate:  “I’m glad to be disturbed.  I have been dreaming bad dreams.  It’s good for me to be wakened, when sleep takes me backward in my life.  What’s wrong with you?  Frightened?”

“Yes.”

She wrote again, and pointed toward the garden with one hand, while she held the slate up with the other:  “Frightened of him?”

“Terribly frightened.”

She wrote for the third time, and offered the slate to Anne with a ghastly smile:  “I have been through it all.  I know.  You’re only at the beginning now.  He’ll put the wrinkles in your face, and the gray in your hair.  There will come a time when you’ll wish yourself dead and buried.  You will live through it, for all that.  Look at Me.”

As she read the last three words, Anne heard the garden door below opened and banged to again.  She caught Hester Dethridge by the arm, and listened.  The tramp of Geoffrey’s feet, staggering heavily in the passage, gave token of his approach to the stairs.  He was talking to himself, still possessed by the delusion that he was at the foot-race.  “Five to four on Delamayn.  Delamayn’s won.  Three cheers for the South, and one cheer more.  Devilish long race.  Night already!  Perry! where’s Perry?”

He advanced, staggering from side to side of the passage.  The stairs below creaked as he set his foot on them.  Hester Dethridge dragged herself free from Anne, advanced, with her candle in her hand, and threw open Geoffrey’s bedroom door; returned to the head of the stairs; and stood there, firm as a rock, waiting for him.  He looked up, as he set his foot on the next stair, and met the view of Hester’s face, brightly illuminated by the candle, looking down at him.  On the instant he stopped, rooted to the place on which he stood.  “Ghost! witch! devil!” he cried out, “take your eyes off me!” He shook his fist at her furiously, with an oath—­sprang back into the hall—­and shut himself into the dining-room from the sight of her.  The panic which had seized him once already in the kitchen-garden at Windygates, under the eyes of the dumb cook, had fastened its hold on him once more.  Frightened—­absolutely frightened—­of Hester Dethridge!