“My dear, what do you suppose _this_ means?” said Aunt Milly, looking wistfully up in my face. “To defy everybody,” I said, scarcely knowing what I was saying; “but, dear Aunt Milly, you warned me to be on my guard. You look so troubled, people will fancy something is wrong.” When I said that, she got up hastily and joined the others. I can’t tell how the strangers felt; but for all of us who belonged to the house, it is impossible to imagine any scene more extraordinary. To see the dauntless, unnatural wickedness of that woman facing and defying everybody--to see her take the principal place, and ignore the troubled, terrified sister, whose guests these people really were--out of all the mysterious veil of secrecy and darkness in which she had been wrapped, to watch her emerging thus, not only as if nothing were wrong with her, but as if, in reality, she was the soul of everything, and dear Aunt Milly only her shadow and servant! When Miss Mortimer took the head of the table at dinner, and Aunt Milly astonished, and not knowing what to make of it, dropped into a seat near the foot, where Harry was, our dismay and wonder were nearly at their climax. Aunt Milly clasped my hands hard; she had got a chair placed in the corner beside me, and whispered-- “I don’t mind it, my dear, don’t think I mind it. If all was well, and I had known her meaning!” I understood that perfectly; but then all was not well, and nobody had known the weird woman’s meaning. Now she had it all in her own hands. With her grey hair, and her thin bare aged shoulders peeping out of her scarf, she made a dreadful pretence of flirting with that old Sir George; and curious Miss Kate sat scrutinising her, and making perpetual remarks; and Aunt Milly and I looked on with awe and alarm which I could not describe. I could scarcely answer Mr. Penrhyn when he spoke to me. I fear he must have thought me a very poor representative of the Mortimers. But I could not keep my attention from that figure at the head of the table. I could not help wondering, did she see the writing and the man’s hand upon the wall? for in all her pretences, and affectations, and coquetries,--those strange coquetries, and gestures, and movements of the head and hands, which might have been pretty in a young beauty, but were so dismal in a white-haired old woman--remember, _she never once forgot_. I could see it plain in her eyes all the time. If the handwriting had come upon the wall, as it did in Belshazzar’s palace, it would not have surprised her. No allusion that could be made would shock or startle her. She knew everything that could come; and, in her devilish daring, she was prepared for all. I hope it is not very wicked of me to use such words; indeed, I cannot tell what others I could use.