Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
THE
LONELY HOUSE
YORKCHAPTER I
Lily Fairfield seemed to be rushing along a darktunnel. It was as if she were being borne on wings.A keen, delicately perfumed air was blowing in herface. Far ahead of her there was a pin-point gleam of brightlight—that surely must be the end of the tunnel? But asshe swept on and on, farther and farther, the gleam did notgrow larger or brighter. It seemed to remain, a white fixedstar of light, infinitely far away.
Though the experience was intensely vivid, in a sense thegirl was conscious that she was experiencing one of thestrange, curious dreams, not wholly unpleasant, thoughsometimes verging on nightmare, which had haunted herat certain intervals during the whole of her not very longlife.
With dreadful suddenness, out of the dark void abovethere leapt on her a huge black and white cat. She couldsee its phosphorescent eyes glaring at her in the darkness;she could feel its stifling weight on her breast.
She awoke with a strangled cry—to realise that the nightmarecat had materialised from a book which had fallen outof the net-rack of the swaying French railway carriage inwhich she was traveling!
She looked round her, still a little dazed by her strangedream. And then she grew very pink, for the only other8two occupants of the railway carri