While, in the dark, the hands were still groping for her,
she eluded them, and succeeded in carrying out Harriet's manoeuvre
so far that a quick bright flame leapt forth, lighting up the whole
room, and revealing two--yes, two! But it did not die away! In her
haste, and in the darkness, she had poured the whole contents of the
bottle on the phosphoric cotton, and dropped both without knowing it
on a chintz curtain. A fresh evening breeze was blowing in from the
window, open behind the shutters, and in one second the curtain was
a flaming, waving sheet. Some one sprang up to tear it down, leaping
on a table in the window. The table overbalanced, the heavy iron
curtain-rod came out suddenly, and there was a fall, the flaming mass
covering the fallen! The glare shone on a strange white face and head
as well as on Jumbo's black one, and with a trampling and crushing
the fire died down, quenched as suddenly as it began, and all was
obscurity again.
"Nephew, dear boy, speak," exclaimed Mr. Belamour; and as there was
no answer, "Open the shutters, Jumbo. For Heaven's sake let us see!"
"Oh! what have I done?" cried poor Aurelia, in horror and misery,
dropping by him on the ground, while the opened shutters admitted
the twilight of a May evening, with a full moon, disclosing a strange
scene.
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