"I pity those whose courtship is made up of nothing else but sweet phrases and caresses, and honeyed compliments. Let'some people' think as they like, I am content-ah! much more than content. Walter, I really must go now; there is no reason why we should be unpunctual because we are 'in love,' as people say."

"If there were, we should have to be unpunctual all our lives, because we have agreed that we are never to be out of love; and chronic unpunctuality is not to be endured. Nor am I sure that we should love each other so much if we indulged in the vice of unpunctuality."

WHEN Hilda reached her room she began to dress with all possible despatch, and as her toilet was no very elaborate performance she was ready before the first bell rang. She was just thinking that, after all, there might be plenty of time for her parliamentary reading with Walter, when Christina called from her own chamber, "Do come here, Hilda, and hear what Aggie has to say!"

And then Hilda went, and listened to the story we have already related.

"The

"This is getting serious," said Christina. woman evidently means mischief, and she will waylay papa or Walter, and pour her tale into their ears at the first opportunity. I shall try to speak to papa to-night; nothing is worse than to have a mystery hanging over one."

"And such a mystery," replied Agnes;

"I feel so sure

it has to do with poor Paul. Surely this woman could not have been his wife? She certainly inferred that she had a right to be about the place, and was angered by my reminding her that she was a trespasser; but that may mean something or nothing." "Wife? Oh no! not his wife, I should say," was Hilda's comment. "She is well-not exactly an old woman, but very near to it; she may not be more than forty-five, perhaps, but that is old for an Italian. I dare say she is a grandmother. If there were any complications with Paul, it would be in connection with her daughter, or niece, perhaps; I can quite understand her espousing the cause of any of her kindred."

"Hush! here comes Hester," interrupted Christina. Hester was the girl who waited upon the young ladies, and she had been sent away from the room when Agnes came to talk to her elder sister. She now returned with a message from Emily. Miss Emily wanted a certain sandal-wood casket, in which she believed were some sleeve-links of her own.

"The sandal-wood casket! answered Christina; "where did I put it now? I thought it contained nothing but the materials for those feather flowers, and a few seed-pearls. I am almost sure it is in the little blue dressing-room-we sat there last week, you know, when we were messing with that foolish decalcomanie; I was rummaging the casket for something I could not find. Go and see, Hester; I think you will find it on one of the tables; and take care of your candle."

66

Oh, please, ma'am !" gasped Hester, looking imploringly at Miss Braden; "indeed, ma'am, I could not go there; I would not if I was to get a fortune for it. Why! I must go into that corridor!"

"Well! and what of that ? The ghosts, if there were any, went away for good and all long ago; they have not been seen in my time, nor in my father's."

"But they've been heard, ma'am ! Indeed, I have heard them myself, and I would take my Bible oath of it; I'm not one to take up things, ma'am-I'm not. I laughed myself when first I was told about the ghosts, but I don't

laugh now; and, what's worse, there is a whisper in the servants'-hall that they're seen again." "What-who are seen again?

"The ghosts, ma'am ; at least, one of them. Oh, could not they be properly laid, Miss Braden? I know ghosts can be laid, for there was one as was a dreadful nuisance in the place I came from-where I was born, down south -and it was laid with a book and a bell and a candle, by the parson, and sent to the Red Sea, as I've heard my old grandmother tell many and many a time."

"Why should the Red Sea be bothered with all the superfluous ghosts of other lands, I wonder?" said Hilda, laughingly. "Did your grandmother ever say, Hester?

"I don't think she ever did, Miss Capel; but I have heard it was because of King Pharaoh and all his army being drowned there-and that's in the Bible, ma'am, so we know it's true."

"We know that Pharaoh and his host were drowned, following after the Israelites, but nothing is said about ghosts, past or present."

"And are the banished ghosts supposed to stay in the Red Sea?" asked Agnes.

"Well, ma'am, they don't exactly stay there, for they begin to come back again as soon as ever they're sent. But they can only take one step in seven years, and so it doesn't much matter. If the Bradenshope ghost was properly laid in the Red Sea, it would never trouble the family any more.”

Hilda and Agnes laughed again, but Miss Braden said gravely: "I am very sorry to hear you talking so foolishly, Hester; I hoped people had more sense in these days than to listen to the tales of their grandmothers, who had but little opportunity of learning better. However, I will not insist on your going for the casket; I will fetch it myself."

'No," said Hilda; "you are not ready for dinner, and I am. I remember now where you put it, and I will go for it. I am not at all afraid of the ghosts." And so Hilda went, to Hester's intense satisfaction. The Blue Room was only just within the dreaded corridor; the haunted precincts lay beyond. The casket was where

Hilda expected to find it, on one of the little inlaid, spider-legged tables in the Blue Dressing Room, which was just as it was left by the young ladies, the decalcomanie litter strewn carelessly about. Hilda took up the casket,

and came out into the corridor again, and then a curious idea took possession of her-rather, as it were, a sensation of not being alone in that solitary north wing. Something like a shiver passed over her as she looked down the long passage, by the dim light of the candle she carried; but she said to herself, "I will not be so absurd! Is it nerves, I wonder? or is it folly, childish fear, and ingrain superstition? These rooms are just the same as the other rooms; and even if they were not, God is in them. He is as much here as in the church yonder, and the darkness and the light are both alike to Him. Now, just for my own discipline, I will walk through all the rooms and have another look at the Medicis cabinet. I sat there composedly enough with Walter not so many weeks ago, and last summer we were often there. I dare say I shall find everything exactly as we left it last time. What a heroine Hester will think me when I tell her I have been through all the haunted rooms. They will all say I am not wanting in courage. Here goes then! Emily must wait five minutes longer for her sleeve-links."

And suiting the action to the word, Hilda entered the first of the deserted rooms. All was silence, solitude, and dust. She passed into another and another, and in the last-which was immediately adjoining the Cabinet or Tapestry Room-she was amazed to behold a plate, with a knife and fork and some bones upon it! Close by the plate was a little horn-cup, with a curious silver rim, half filled with liquid. Had the Bradenshope ghost taken to private banquets? Did he or she feast on cold boiled pork, and drink claret and water, or something that looked very much like it?

As Hilda gazed, and even touched the common willowpattern plate, she heard, very near to her, a long-drawn, shuddering sigh, that was almost a groan; then another hollow, sepulchral sound-a voice of anguish and despair. She stood motionless, as if riveted to the spot; she felt a cold perspiration steal over her whole body, her knees

shook under her, her hands trembled, even her teeth began to chatter. Still she tried to be valiant, and called out, though in rather shaky tones, "Who is there?" And she took one step towards the door of the next chamber.

The door, which was a little way open, was suddenly slammed in her face, and at the same time the stream of air extinguished her candle, and she was left in total darkness, while an awful rushing sound, and something between a wail and a moan, echoed through the lonely place. And Hilda, in spite of her daring and her plain good sense, was so terrified that she could not stir. As she stood, scarcely knowing whether this were not some horrible nightmare of a dream, she heard the dinner-bell ringing loudly, but, as it were, with a dulled and muffled clang. It roused her, however, and she moved to find the door, and after a little groping succeeded; it seemed an interminable time before she once more reached the lighted gallery, which led to her own room. She found only Christina, ready to descend, and waiting for her. "I was just coming after you," said Miss Braden, as Hilda set down the casket. Why! what is the matter? You look as if you had been actually interviewing the ghosts!"

Hilda only gasped, and seemed inclined to cry.

"What is it, darling? Some one has been frightening you! Drink some water, and smell my salts. I wish Ĭ had some wine here."

"Dear me! what a simpleton I am!" said Hilda, smiling through her tears. "Yes, I have been frightened my nerves are not so strong as I thought them. Christina! there is something-somebody in the Tapestry Room, where the Medicis cabinet is."

"Are you sure? The wind is rising, and there are rats in that part of the building."

"Rats do not shut doors in one's face."

"But the wind might. There is the second bell. Come, my dear Hilda, let us go down. The lamps, and company, and your dinner will soon set your nerves to rights." "But there really is some one there, Christina. Suppose it should be a robber! suppose there is a gang !"’