The lady was now quite in the room, and standing upright showed the tall shape and stern lineaments of Mary Matchwell.  And as she stood she laughed a sort of shuddering laugh, like a person who had just had a plunge in cold water.

‘Stop that noise,’ said she, recognising Betty, who saw her with unspeakable terror.  ’I’m the lady that came here, you know, some months ago, with Mrs. Macnamara; and I’m Mrs. Nutter, which the woman up stairs is not.  I’m Mrs. Nutter, and you’re my servants, do ye mind? and I’ll act a fair mistress by you, if you do me honest service.  Open the hall-door,’ she said to the man, who was by this time also in the room.  And forth he went to do her bidding, and a gentleman, who turned out to be that respectable pillar of the law whom Mr. Gamble in the morning had referred to as ‘Dirty Davy,’ entered.  He was followed by Mrs. Mary Matchwell’s maid, a giggling, cat-like gipsy, with a lot of gaudy finery about her, and a withered, devilment leering in her face; and a hackney-coach drove up to the door, which had conveyed the party from town; and the driver railing in loud tones, after the manner of his kind in old times, at all things, reeking of whiskey and stale tobacco, and cursing freely, pitched in several trunks, one after the other; and, in fact, it became perfectly clear that M. M. was taking possession.  And Betty and Moggy, at their wits’ end between terror and bewilderment, were altogether powerless to resist, and could only whimper a protest against the monstrous invasion, while poor little Sally Nutter up stairs, roused by the wild chorus of strange voices from the lethargy of her grief, and even spurred into active alarm, locked her door, and then hammered with a chair upon the floor, under a maniacal hallucination that she was calling I know not what or whom to the rescue.

Then Dirty Davy read aloud, with due emphasis, to the maids, copies, as he stated, of the affidavits sworn to that day by Mistress Mary Matchwell, or as he called her, Mrs. Nutter, relict of the late Charles Nutter, gentleman, of the Mills, in the parish of Chapelizod, barony of Castleknock, and county of Dublin, deposing to her marriage with the said Charles Nutter having been celebrated in the Church of St. Clement Danes, in London, on the 7th of April, 1750.  And then came a copy of the marriage certificate, and then a statement how, believing that deceased had left no ‘will’ making any disposition of his property, or naming an executor, she applied to the Court of Prerogative for letters of administration to the deceased, which letters would be granted in a few days; and in the meantime the bereaved lady would remain in possession of the house and chattels of her late husband.

All this, of course, was so much ‘Hebrew-Greek,’ as honest Father Roach was wont to phrase it, to the scared women.  But M. M.—­[Greek:  nykti eoikost]—­fixing them both with her cold and terrible gaze, said quite intelligibly—­