No candles yet in Lady Chandos's rooms, but a great flood of light in those of Mrs. Chandos. The commotion in the ironing-room, that followed on the discovered presence of Hill, had given me the opportunity to come away, and so exchange (not willingly) the gossiping cheerfulness of the back, for the dreary front of the house. I had nearly laughed aloud at those foolish servant-girls; nevertheless, in what they had said there was food for speculation. For when Harry Chandos was abed, sick with fever; when he was over in France, with the broad sea and many miles of land between him and his home; how could they have seen him, or fancied they saw him, in these dark walks, night after night, at Chandos? Pacing the dark gravel-walk from wing to wing, glancing, as I passed each time, through the window-panes and the muslin curtains into the oak-parlour, where the solitary tea waited, I thought over it all, and came to the conclusion that, taking one curious thing with another, something was uncanny in the place. How long should I have to stay at it?—how long would it be before Emily de Mellissie came back to me? The hall-door stood open, and the hall-lamp threw its light across the lawn in a straight line. It seemed like a ray of company amid the general dreariness. I took a fancy to walk along the pleasant stream, forgetting or unheeding the dew that might lie on the grass. On reaching the other side, I stood a moment at the top of the pine-walk, and then advanced a few steps down it. Some one was there before me. A white figure—as it looked—was flitting about; and I gave a great start. What with the night-hour, the solitary loneliness of all around, the soft sighing sound from the branches of the trees, and the servant-girls' recent talk of the "ghost," I am not sure but I began to think of ghosts myself. Ghost, or no ghost, it came gliding up to me, with its slender form, its lovely face: Mrs. Chandos, in a white silk evening dress, with a small white opera-cloak on her shoulders. It was her pleasure, as I learnt later, to dress each day for her own lonely society just as she would for a state dinner-table. "How you startled me!" she exclaimed. "With that great brown shawl on your head, you look as much like a man as a woman. But I saw by the height it was not _he_. Did you know that he came—that he was here last night?" she added, dropping her voice to the faintest whisper. It was the first time Mrs. Chandos had voluntarily addressed me. Of course I guessed that she alluded to Mr. Harry Chandos: but I hesitated to answer, after the caution he had given me. Was there anything _wild_ about her voice and manner as she spoke?—had her spirits run away with her to-night?—or did the fact of her flitting about in the white evening-dress in this wild way, like any schoolgirl, cause me to fancy it? "Did you know it, I ask?" she impatiently rejoined. "Surely you may answer _me_."