"You are thinking of the present baronet: he is not dead. I spoke of the late one. Look out some of these light nights, will you, and tell me whether you see anything. I cannot; for the available windows of the east wing do not face this way. They say he takes exercise there," pointing to the pine-walk. "Did you say Sir Thomas's ghost, Mrs. Penn?" I asked, laughing. "The world says so. I hear that some of the maids here, seeing the sight, have arrived at the notion that it is only Mr. Harry Chandos given to come out of his room at night and take moonlight promenades." There was a ball in the window-seat, and I tossed it with indifference. She had got hold of the wrong story, and it was not my place to set her right. Hill came up, saying Mr. Chandos wished to speak to me; but I did not hurry down. I had made my mind up to borrow sufficient money of him to take me to Nulle, and was trying to call up courage to ask it. His leg was upon a rest when I went in, and he leaned back in his chair reading a newspaper. "I want to speak to you, Miss Hereford." "And I—wanted—to speak to you, sir, if you please," I said, resolutely, in spite of my natural hesitation. "Very well. Place aux dames. You shall have the first word." It appeared, however, that Lizzy Dene was to have that. She came in at the moment, asked leave to speak, and began a recital of a second visit she had paid the gipsies the previous night, in which she had accused them of having attacked Mr. Chandos. The recital was a long one, and delivered curiously, very fast and in one tone, just as if she were repeating from a book, and imparting the idea that it had been learnt by heart. She wound up with saying the gipsies quitted the common in the night; and therefore no doubt could remain that one of the women had been the assailant. Mr. Chandos regarded her keenly. "Lizzy Dene, what is your motive for pursuing these gipsies in the way you do? No one accuses them but you." "Motive, sir?" returned the woman. "Ay; motive," he pointedly said. "I shall begin to suspect that you know more about the matter than you would like made public. I think it is you to whom we must look for an explanation, not the gipsies." Did you ever see a pale face turn to a glowing, fiery red?—the scarlet of confusion, if not of guilt? So turned Lizzy Dene's, to my utter amazement, and I think to that of her master. Could _she_ have had anything to do with the attack upon him? She stammered forth a few deprecatory words, that, in suspecting the gipsies, she had only been actuated by the wish to serve Mr. Chandos, and backed out of the parlour. Backed out to find herself confronted by a tall swarthy man, who had made his way into the hall without the ceremony of knocking for admittance. One of the gipsies unquestionably. Lizzie Dene gave a half shriek and flew away, and the man came inside the room, fixing his piercing eyes upon those of Mr. Chandos.