Not till I had settled down to my afternoon’s sewing did I realize how the events of the night had shaken me.  I couldn’t pass that locked door without a shiver.  I knew I had heard someone come out of it, and walk down the passage ahead of me.  I thought of speaking to Mrs. Blinder or to Mr. Wace, the only two in the house who appeared to have an inkling of what was going on, but I had a feeling that if I questioned them they would deny everything, and that I might learn more by holding my tongue and keeping my eyes open.  The idea of spending another night opposite the locked room sickened me, and once I was seized with the notion of packing my trunk and taking the first train to town; but it wasn’t in me to throw over a kind mistress in that manner, and I tried to go on with my sewing as if nothing had happened.

I hadn’t worked ten minutes before the sewing-machine broke down.  It was one I had found in the house, a good machine, but a trifle out of order:  Mrs. Blinder said it had never been used since Emma Saxon’s death.  I stopped to see what was wrong, and as I was working at the machine a drawer which I had never been able to open slid forward and a photograph fell out.  I picked it up and sat looking at it in a maze.  It was a woman’s likeness, and I knew I had seen the face somewhere—­the eyes had an asking look that I had felt on me before.  And suddenly I remembered the pale woman in the passage.

I stood up, cold all over, and ran out of the room.  My heart seemed to be thumping in the top of my head, and I felt as if I should never get away from the look in those eyes.  I went straight to Mrs. Blinder.  She was taking her afternoon nap, and sat up with a jump when I came in.

“Mrs. Blinder,” said I, “who is that?” And I held out the photograph.

She rubbed her eyes and stared.

“Why, Emma Saxon,” says she.  “Where did you find it?”

I looked hard at her for a minute.  “Mrs. Blinder,” I said, “I’ve seen that face before.”

Mrs. Blinder got up and walked over to the looking-glass.  “Dear me!  I must have been asleep,” she says.  “My front is all over one ear.  And now do run along, Miss Hartley, dear, for I hear the clock striking four, and I must go down this very minute and put on the Virginia ham for Mr. Brympton’s dinner.”

IV

TO all appearances, things went on as usual for a week or two.  The only difference was that Mr. Brympton stayed on, instead of going off as he usually did, and that Mr. Ranford never showed himself.  I heard Mr. Brympton remark on this one afternoon when he was sitting in my mistress’s room before dinner.

“Where’s Ranford?” says he.  “He hasn’t been near the house for a week.  Does he keep away because I’m here?”

Mrs. Brympton spoke so low that I couldn’t catch her answer.

“Well,” he went on, “two’s company and three’s trumpery; I’m sorry to be in Ranford’s way, and I suppose I shall have to take myself off again in a day or two and give him a show.”  And he laughed at his own joke.