Free Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton by Rowland Hughes

or female? Enough to say that it was loathsome to behold, congested, the swollen tongue protruding leeringly from the mouth….
    Isabella gave a low moan, clutched at a tree for support and, leaning her head against its trunk, battled with closed eyes for her reason and her life. Sheer animal fear of death had blotted out all else from her reeling mind. Her heart was like a horse that had broken loose and was galloping wildly away. If she could not stop its panic flight she knew that it would gallop her out of life itself.
    It was in this dire extremity that she summoned to her aid from the depth of her consciousness the figure of the guardian angel who, as a child, she had been convinced had sat all night at the end of her bed, and who, even now, had not in her belief entirely forsaken its guardianship of her slumbers. It was, as was to be expected, a Victorian angel, closely resembling the picture of the angel carrying a dying child to Heaven that hung above the mantelpiece in Isabella’s bedroom - an angel with a sweetly insipid face, long curling hair, substantial wings and a white robe as decent as a nightgown. But though Isabella’s angel would no doubt have appeared mawkish to modern eyes, it performedits duty with admirable efficiency. It caught and quieted Isabella’s stampeding heart. Furthermore, it gave Isabella the courage to open her eyes and look at the accursed tree.
    The bough stretched blamelessly across the path, its ghastly burden vanished as though it had never been.
    Isabella turned and ran for home, stumbling on and tearing the hem of her skirt as she ran. Along the path she fled, across the bridge and lawn, never pausing till she had run through the conservatory into the boudoir.
    It was empty, except for Aunt Lizzie who was dozing on the sofa where Isabella had settled her half an hour ago, her face imperious and discontented in sleep, her lace cap a little awry, her massive bosom, which looked as though it had been poured into her dark silk dress, heaving in comfortable regularity. The boudoir was the same too. Isabella’s affrighted eyes took in the safe, familiar details; the fringed velvet curtains, the draped mantelpiece and its vases, the occasional tables with their rich tablecloths and burden of knick-knacks and photographs. All was substantial, seemly, accountable, as she had (till less than half an hour ago) believed the entire universe to be.
    She ran upstairs, meeting no one on the way, for the first dinner gong had sounded, staggered into her bedroom and there, before the alarmed gaze of her sister Florence and of Agnes Allen, fell down in a faint.

    They put her to bed and administered the usual remedies. By the morning she declared herself to be completely recovered.That she had at any rate recovered sufficiently to carry out her bridesmaid’s duties is shown by the photograph of the wedding group.
    There is the bride, a mysterious figure veiled in clouds of white tulle, for it seems that even after the ceremony her virgin charms must be concealed from her lover’s eyes. There is the bridegroom, a pleasing, rather waggish-looking young man (it is satisfactory to be able to record that Aunt Lizzie was wrong and that he did live to make old bones). And there, against a background of bonnets, tiny hats, shawls, dolmans, 6 beruffled and looped-up skirts, frock-coats, top hats, side-whiskers and beards, are the ten young bridesmaids in their festal dresses, and among them Isabella Skelton, looking a little wan. But that may be because she is sitting next to Miss Kathie Allen, whose saucy, roguish air beckons unmistakably to us across the gulf of seventy years.
    One thing is certain: only Isabella’s enjoyment on that festive day was overshadowed by the thought of the appalling vision that had assailed her. Amid all her terror and mental disarray she had resolved that no knowledge of this ill-omened thing should mar her dear Blanche’s happiness and,