At the sight of the squalid house in which Winifred had lived and died I passed into a new world of horror.  Dead matter had become conscious, and for a second or two it was not the human being before me, but the rusty iron, the broken furniture, the great patches of brick and dirty mortar where the plaster had fallen from the walls,—­it was these which seemed to have life—­a terrible life—­and to be talking to me, telling me what I dared not listen to about the triumph of evil over good.  I knew that the woman was still speaking, but for a time I heard no sound—­my senses could receive no impressions save from the sinister eloquence of the dead and yet living matter around me.  Not an object there that did not seem charged with the wicked message of the heartless Fates.

At length, and as I stood upon the doorstep, a trembling, a mighty expectance, seized me like an ague-fit; and I heard myself saying, ’I am come to see the body, Mrs. Gudgeon.’  Then I saw her peer, blinking, into my face, as she said,

‘Oh, oh, it’s you, is it?  It’s one o’ the lot as keeps the studeros, is it?—­the cussed Chelsea lot as killed her.  I recklet yer a-starin’ at the goddess Joker!  So you’ve come to see my poor darter’s body, are you?  How werry kind, to be sure!  Pray come in, gentleman, an’ pray let the beautiful goddess Joker be perlite an’ show sich a nice kind wisiter the way upstairs.’

She took a candle, and with a mincing, mocking movement, curtseying low at every step, she backed before me, and then stood waiting at the foot of the staircase with a drunken look of satire on her features.

‘Pray go upstairs fust, gentleman,’ said she; ‘I can’t think o’ goin’ up fust, an’ lettin’ my darter’s kind wisiter foller behind like a sarvint.  I ’opes we knows our manners better nor that comes to in Primrose Court.’

‘None of this foolery now, woman,’ said I.  ’There’s a time for everything, you know.’

‘How right he is!’ she exclaimed, nodding to the flickering candle in her hand.  ‘There’s a time for everything an’ this is the time for makin’ a peep-show of my pore darter’s body.  Oh, yes!’

I mounted a shaky staircase, the steps of which were, some of them, so broken away that the ascent was no easy matter.  The miserable light from the woman’s candle, as I entered the room, seemed suddenly to shoot up in a column of dazzling brilliance that caused me to close my eyes in pain, so unnaturally sensitive had they been rendered by the terrible expectance of the sight that was about to sear them.

When I re-opened my eyes, I perceived that in the room there was one window, which looked like a trap-door; on the red pantiles of the opposite roof lay a smoke-dimmed sheet of moonlight.  On the floor at the further end of the garret, where the roof met the boards at a sharp angle, a mattress was spread.  Then speech came to me.

‘Not there!’ I groaned, pointing to the hideous black-looking bed, and turning my head away in terror.  The woman burst into a cackling laugh.