This was the gist of Mrs. Woolper's meditations very often nowadays. But the strange sense of perplexity, the nameless fear, the vague horror, were not to be banished from her mind. A sense of some shapeless presence for ever at her side haunted her by day and night. What was it? What did its presence portend? It was as if a figure, shrouded from head to foot, was there, dark and terrible, at her elbow, and she would not turn to meet the horror face to face. Sometimes the phantom hand lifted a corner of the veil, and the shade said, "Look at me! See who and what I am! You have seen me before. I am here again! and this time you shall not refuse to meet me face to face! I am the shadow of the horror you suspected in the past!" The shadowy fears which oppressed Mrs. Woolper during this period did not in any way lessen her practical usefulness. From the commencement of Charlotte's slow decline she had shown herself attentive, and even officious, in all matters relating to the invalid. With her own hands she decanted the famous port which Georgy fetched from the particular bin in Mr. Sheldon's carefully arranged cellar. When the physician was called in, and wrote his harmless little prescription, it was Mrs. Woolper who carried the document to the dispensing chemist, and brought back the innocent potion, which might, peradventure, effect some slight good, and was too feeble a decoction to do any harm. Charlotte duly appreciated all this kindness; but she repeatedly assured the housekeeper that her ailments were not worthy of so much care. It was Mrs. Woolper whom Mr. Sheldon employed to get lodgings for the family, when it had been ultimately decided that a change to the seaside was the best cure for Miss Halliday. "I am too busy to go to Hastings myself this week," he said; "but I shall be prepared to spend a fortnight there after next Monday. What I want you to do, Nancy, is to slip down tomorrow, with a second-class return-ticket, and look about for a nice place for us. I don't care about being in Hastings; there's too much cockneyism in the place at this time of year. There's a little village called Harold's Hill, within a mile or so of St. Leonard's--a dull, out-of-the-way place, but rustic and picturesque, and all that kind of thing--the sort of place that women like. Now, I'd rather stay at that place than at Hastings. So you can take a fly at the station, drive straight to Harold's Hill, and secure the best lodgings you can get." "You think as the change of air will do Miss Halliday good?" asked Mrs. Woolper anxiously, after she had promised to do all her kind master required of her. "Do I think it will do her good? Of course I do. Sea-air and sea-bathing will set her up in no time; there's nothing particular the matter with her."