“Not yet,” answers the captain, with a little grin.  “But, I say, don’t go—­will you?”

“I must; I’m dying to see it,” replies Ethel.  “You needn’t come, you know; I dare say I shall be able to get on without you for half an hour or so.”

“I dare say you could get on uncommonly well without me forever,” retorts the captain rather gloomily.  To himself he confesses moodily that this girl with the auburn hair and the blue eyes has the power of taking the “curl out of him” whensoever she wishes.

“I believe you are afraid of the bogies hidden in this secret chamber, and so don’t care to come,” says Miss Villiers tauntingly.

“I know something else I’m a great deal more afraid of,” responds the gallant captain meaningly.

“Me?” she asks innocently, but certainly coquettishly.  “Oh, Captain Ringwood”—­in a tone of mock injury—­“what an unkind speech!  Now I know you look upon me in the light of an ogress, or a witch, or something equally dreadful.  Well, as I have the name of it, I may as well have the gain of it, and so—­I command you to attend me to the ’haunted chamber.’”

“You order—­I obey,” says the captain. “’Call and I follow—­I follow, though I die!’” After which quotation he accompanies her toward the house in the wake of Dora and Sir Adrian, who has been pressed by the clever widow into her service.

Florence and Arthur Dynecourt follow them, Arthur talking gayly, as though determined to ignore the fact that he is thoroughly unwelcome to his companion; Florence, with head erect and haughty footsteps and eyes carefully averted.

Past the hall, through the corridor, up the staircase, through the galleries, along more corridors they go, laughing and talking eagerly, until they come at last to an old and apparently much disused part of the house.

Traversing more corridors, upon which dust lies thickly, they come at last to a small iron-bound door that blocks the end of one passage.

“Now we really begin to get near to it,” says Sir Adrian encouragingly, turning, as he always does, when opportunity offers, to address himself solely to Florence.

“Don’t you feel creepy-creepy?” asks Ethel Villiers, with a smothered laugh, looking up at Captain Ringwood.

Then Sir Adrian pushes open the door, revealing a steep flight of stone steps that leads upward to another door above.  This door, like the lower one, is bound with iron.

“This is the tower,” explains Sir Adrian, still acting as cicerone to the small party, who look with interest around them.  Mrs. Talbot, affecting nervousness, clings closely to Sir Adrian’s arm.  Indeed she is debating in her own mind whether it would be effective or otherwise to subside into a graceful swoon within his arms.  “Yonder is the door of the chamber,” continues Sir Adrian.  “Come, let us go up to it.”

They all ascend the last flight of stone stairs; and presently their host opens the door, and reveals to them whatever mysteries may lie beyond.  He enters first, and they all follow him, but, as if suddenly recollecting some important point, he turns, and calls loudly to Captain Ringwood not to let the door shut behind him.