Shortly before, she had gone with Dorothy, for the first time, to see
the Old House, and there had had rather a narrow escape. Walking down
the garden they came to the pond or small lake, so well known to the
children of Glaston as bottomless. Two stone steps led from the end of
the principal walk down to the water, which was, at the time, nearly
level with the top of the second. On the upper step Juliet was standing,
not without fear, gazing into the gulf, which was yet far deeper than
she imagined, when, without the smallest preindication, the lower step
suddenly sank. Juliet sprung back to the walk, but turned instantly to
look again. She saw the stone sinking, and her eyes opened wider and
wider, as it swelled and thinned to a great, dull, wavering mass, grew
dimmer and dimmer, then melted away and vanished utterly. With "stricken
look," and fright-filled eyes, she turned to Dorothy, who was a little
behind her, and said,

"How will you be able to sleep at night? I should be always fancying
myself sliding down into it through the darkness."

To this place of terror she was now on the road. When consciousness
returned to her as she lay on the floor of her husband's dressing-room,
it brought with it first the awful pool and the sinking stone. She
seemed to stand watching it sink, lazily settling with a swing this way
and a sway that, into the bosom of the earth, down and down, and still
down. Nor did the vision leave her as she came more to herself. Even
when her mental eyes were at length quite open to the far more frightful
verities of her condition, half of her consciousness was still watching
the ever sinking stone; until at last she seemed to understand that it
was showing her a door out of her misery, one easy to open.