The Argosy — page 253: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Lady Creighton. 239 whiteness, and with another biting laugh he resumed his former attitude of careless ease, and continued : “The same old halls which your crimson-slippered feet once trod echoed our heavier footsteps; the same frescoed door which your delicate fingers so often touched swung back at our louder ‘Open sesame!’ The harp strings were all rusted and broken, but these fine golden strands remained, deathless tokens of the fair being whose graceful head they once adorned.” And he suspended the shining threads between Lady Creighton’s eyes and the flaming chandelier. ‘Oh, heaven! Will you never be done?” shudderingly gasped the stricken woman. “Soon, very soon, my Lady Creighton. Be patient. She was, I know, though her wails and shrieks rung pitifully through those old rooms and halls, when we reached, with that ramping, unearthly crew, the little frescoed door. Ha! So you know something of that spirit gangr—something of the tramping feet, the fiendish laughs, the shrieks, wails, and the harp strains?” he queried chillingly as Lady Creighton silently raised before her bowed head two deprecating hands with the palms outward. “Elton ! Elton! Be merciful!” I said, grasping his arm. He shook me off without a word or look, continuing : ‘“‘ And, my Lady Creighton, can you believe it?—we saw your very self there before that little frescoed door! Black satin, all crimson flecked from peerless head to dainty foot, you wore. My lady, do you love the colour of your deeds?” glancing significantly at her velvet robe. He rose, speaking in his own calm, rich tones as he looked down upon her pallid face and shivering form. “T have now told you something of what I have heard, and will detain you no longer. To-morrow I shall see you again. Lady Creighton must prove her innocence.” And on that morrow he did see her. We were noiselessly conducted into a darkened chamber, and up to a couch on which lay a shrouded form. The linen was softly folded away from a face scarcely whiter than that on which we had gazed the night before, but sweet and placid as an infant's. Lady Creighton had appealed to the highest tribunal. comicbooks.com