The face was horribly distorted by terror, the skull
shattered, and around the neck was slung a valuable cross made of
precious stones. But the most interesting feature of the case is
this, that in front of the body, in a fit of a remarkable kind,
squatted his daughter--you may have seen her, an exceedingly pretty
girl lately come from Wales or somewhere--and on her face was
reflected and mimicked, in the most astonishing way, the horrible
expression on the face of the corpse, while the fingers of her right
hand were so closely locked around the cross--'
I felt that from my mouth there issued a voice not mine--a long
smothered shriek like that which had seemed to issue from my mouth on
that awful night when, looking out of the window, I had heard the
noise of the landslip. Then I felt myself whispering 'The Curse!'
Then I knew no more.
XIII
I had another dangerous relapse, and was delirious for two days, I
think. When I came to myself, the first words I uttered to Mivart,
whom I found with me, were inquiries about Winifred. He was loth at
first to revive the subject, though he supposed that the effect of
his narrative upon me had arisen partly from my weakness and partly
from what he called his 'sensational way' of telling the story.
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