Yes, Mrs. Gass believed that, and warmly sympathized with him. She then expressed a wish to see the coffin. "Would it be well for her to go up?" he asked. "Oh dear, yes," Mrs. Gass answered; "she was not afraid of anything." And the doctor took her up without further hesitation. There was little if any danger now, he observed, as he raised the sheet, which still hung there, to enable her to enter the grey room. Everything was completed. Hepburn's men had been to and fro, and all was ended. The outer coffin was of oak, its lid bearing the inscription. Mrs. Gass's tears fairly gushed out as site read it. "BESSY RANE. AGED 31." "But you have not put the date of the death, doctor!" cried Mrs. Gass, surprised at the omission. "No? True. That's Thomas Hepburn's fault; I left it to him. The man is half-crazed just now, between grief for his brother and fear for himself. It will be put on the grave." From Dr. Rane's Mrs. Gass went to Dallory Hall, knowing that madam was absent. Otherwise she would not have ventured there. And never was guest more welcome to its master. Poor Mr. North spoke out to her all his grief for Bessy without reservation. But of all who felt this death, none were so affected by it as Jelly. She could not rest for the wild thoughts that tormented her day and night. The idea at first taken up kept floating through her head, and sometimes she could not get rid of it for hours: an idea that Mrs. Rane had been put into her coffin alive; that what she saw was Mrs. Rane herself, and not her spirit. Yet Jelly knew that this could not be, and her imagination would turn to another wild improbability, though she dared not follow it--that the poor lady had not died a natural death. One night there came surging into Jelly's brain the suggestive case put by Timothy Wilks, that some men might be found who would put their wives out of the way for the sake of the tontine money. Jelly tossed from side to side in her uneasy bed, and stared at the candle--for she no longer cared to sleep in the dark--and tried to get rid of the wicked notion. But she never got rid of it again; and when she rose in the morning, pale, and trembling, and weary, she believed that the dread mystery had solved itself to her, and would be found in _this_. What ought she to do? Going about that day as one in a dream, the question continually presented itself to her. Jelly was at her wits' end with indecision: at night resolving to tell of the apparition, and of her suspicion of Dr. Rane; in the morning putting the thoughts from her, and call herself a fool for yielding to them. Dinah could not make out what ailed her, she was so strange and silent, but privately supposed it might be the condition of Mr. Timothy Wilks. For that gentleman was confined to his bed with some attack connected with the liver.