Chapter 16

A MIDNIGHT VISITOR.

Now all this time, while the tragi-comedy of life was
being played in these three suburban villas, while on a
commonplace stage love and humor and fears and lights and
shadows were so swiftly succeeding each other, and while
these three families, drifted together by fate, were
shaping each other's destinies and working out in their
own fashion the strange, intricate ends of human life,
there were human eyes which watched over every stage of
the performance, and which were keenly critical of every
actor on it. Across the road beyond the green palings
and the close-cropped lawn, behind the curtains of their
creeper-framed windows, sat the two old ladies, Miss
Bertha and Miss Monica Williams, looking out as from a
private box at all that was being enacted before
them. The growing friendship of the three families, the
engagement of Harold Denver with Clara Walker, the
engagement of Charles Westmacott with her sister, the
dangerous fascination which the widow exercised over the
Doctor, the preposterous behavior of the Walker girls and
the unhappiness which they had caused their father, not
one of these incidents escaped the notice of the two
maiden ladies. Bertha the younger had a smile or a sigh
for the lovers, Monica the elder a frown or a shrug for
the elders. Every night they talked over what they had
seen, and their own dull, uneventful life took a warmth
and a coloring from their neighbors as a blank wall
reflects a beacon fire.

And now it was destined that they should experience
the one keen sensation of their later years, the one
memorable incident from which all future incidents should
be dated.

It was on the very night which succeeded the events
which have just been narrated, when suddenly into Monica
William's head, as she tossed upon her sleepless bed,
there shot a thought which made her sit up with a thrill
and a gasp.

"Bertha," said she, plucking at the shoulder of her
sister, "I have left the front window open."

"No, Monica, surely not." Bertha sat up also, and
thrilled in sympathy.

"I am sure of it. You remember I had forgotten to
water the pots, and then I opened the window, and Jane
called me about the jam, and I have never been in the
room since."

"Good gracious, Monica, it is a mercy that we have
not been murdered in our beds. There was a house broken
into at Forest Hill last week. Shall we go down and shut
it?"

"I dare not go down alone, dear, but if you will come
with me. Put on your slippers and dressing-gown. We do
not need a candle. Now, Bertha, we will go down
together."

Two little white patches moved vaguely through the
darkness, the stairs