The bedrooms at Durham Hall were situated on either side of a corridor, and fearful of rousing the family or being caught in _deshabile_, I trod on tiptoe, shading my candle with my hand. It was owing to this circumstance, I suppose, that I had reached the centre of the corridor without causing the least suspicion of my presence; but as I passed by the apartment where the remains of my unfortunate host lay ready for burial, the door suddenly opened and a light appeared upon the threshold. I halted, expecting to see emerge the figure of my widowed niece, but lifting my eyes, to my astonishment I encountered the shrinking, almost terrified, gaze of the professor’s wife. Robed in her night-dress, pallid as the corpse which lay within, her large frightened eyes apparently the only living things about her, she stood staring at me as though she had been entranced. Her brown hair floated over her shoulders, her feet were bare; one hand held a lighted candle, the other grasped the packet of letters of which I had been in search. So we stood for a moment regarding one another—I taking in these small but important details; she looking as though she implored my mercy and forbearance. And then I drew back with the gesture of respect due to her sex, and, clad in her white dress, she swept past me like a startled spirit and disappeared. I gained my own room, but it was not to sleep. A thousand incidents, insignificant in themselves, but powerful when welded into one, sprang up in my mind to convince me that Justina and I and everybody had been on a wrong tack, and that in the professor’s wife, the ‘quiet-looking little lady’ with her Quaker-like robes, downcast eyes and modest appearance, in the ‘best friend’ that my niece had ever possessed, I had discovered the writer of those letters, the concealed visitor in Sir Harry’s room, the ‘Pet’ whose name had been the last sound heard to issue from his dying lips. For many hours I lay awake pondering over the best course for me to pursue. I could not bear the thought of undeceiving my poor niece, whose heart had already suffered so much; besides, it seemed like sacrilege to drag to light the secrets of the dead. At the same time I felt that Mrs Benson should receive some hint that her presence in Durham Hall, at that juncture, if desired, was no longer desirable. And the next day, finding she was not likely to accord me an interview, I made the reception of the missing letters a pretext for demanding one. She came to her room door holding them in her hand, and the marks of trouble were so distinct in her face that I had to summon all my courage to go through the task which I considered my duty. ‘You found these in the drawing-room last night?’ I said, as I received them from her. ‘I did,’ she answered, but her voice trembled and her lips were very white. She seemed to know by instinct what was coming.