The Spiral Staircase by Ethel Lina White

as long.
    The novelty of his attention stimulated her confidence.
    “Do you mean the will?” she asked boldly.
    He nodded.
    “Will she—or won’t she?”
    “We talked about it,” said Helen, inflated with her own importance. “I advised her not to keep putting it off.” Newton gave a shout of excitement. “Aunt Blanche. Come here.”,
    Miss Warren was wafted by some terrestrial wind out of the drawingroom, in obedience to her nephew’s call. For some inexplicable reason, the shambling short-sighted youth seemed to sway the affection of his own womankind, even if he failed to hold his wife.
    “What is it?” she asked.
    “Epic news,” Newton told her. “Miss Capel has worked faster in five minutes than the rest of us in five years. She’s got Gran to talk about her will.”
    “Not exactly that,” explained Helen. “But she said she couldn’t die, because she had a job to do-an unpleasant job, which everyone puts off.”
    “Good enough,” nodded Newton. “Well, Miss Capel, I only hope you will go on with the good work, if she’s wakeful, tonight.”
    Even Miss Warren seemed impressed by the fresh development, for she looked, more or less directly, at Helen.
    “Extraordinary,” she murmured. “You seem to have more .influence over her than anyone else.”
    Helen walked away, conscious that she had been betrayed by her impulse to play to the gallery. Now that the family had a direct personal interest in her relations with Lady Warren, she could only expect their opposition, if she appealed to them against the verdict of the blue room.
    But she continued to hold her head high, as though sustained by popular support on her way to execution, even while she shrank from her first glimpse of the scaffold. In her last minute, she would be alone.
    When she reached the kitchen, she was instantly aware that Mrs. Oates was in no mood for gossip, while Oates kept out of his wife’s way, in a significant manner. Regardless of Helen’s finery, Mrs. Oates pointed to a steaming basin, on the table.
    “Just blanch these for the tipsy-cake,” she said. “I’m behind with my dinner. And Oates keeps dodging under my feet, until I don’t know if I’m up in the air, or down a coal-mine.”
    In a chastened mood, Helen sat down and gingerly popped almonds out of their shrivelled brown skins. She had accepted the fact of the doctor’s absence so completely that she ignored the sound of a bell ringing in the basement hall.
    It was Mrs. Oates who glanced at the indicator.
    “Front door,” she snapped. “That’ll be the doctor.”
    Helen sprang to her feet and rushed to the door.
    “I’ll let him in,” she cried.
    “Thank you, miss,” said Oates gratefully. “I haven’t my trousers on.”
    “Disgraceful,” laughed Helen, who knew he referred to the fact that he put on his best trousers and a linen jacket, in order to carry in the dinner.
    Again hope soared, as she flew up the stairs and opened the front door, letting in a sheet of torrential rain, driven before the gale, as well as the doctor.
    He was strongly-built, and inclined to be stocky, with short blunt clean-shaven features. Helen beamed her wel come, while he—in turn—looked at her with approval.
    “Is this Gala Night?” he asked.
    His gaze held none of the uncomfortable suction of the nurse’s eyes, so that Helen rejoiced in her new evening frock. But Dr. Parry was more concerned by the hollows in her neck than struck by the whiteness of her skin.
    “Odd that you are not better developed,” he frowned, “with all the housework you do,”
    “I’ve not been doing any lately,” explained Helen.
    “I see,” muttered Dr. Parry, as he wondered why voluntary starvation, in the case of a slimming patient should fail to affect him, since the result was the same.
    “Like milk?” he asked. “But, of course, you don’t.”
    “Don’t I? I’d be a peril, if I worked in a dairy.”
    “You ought to drink a lot. I’ll speak to Mrs.