In a large arm-chair at the fire, propped up with pillows, sat an emaciated object, white, thin, cadaverous. A tall man evidently, bearing in features a great resemblance to Mr. Chandos, a strange likeness to that ghostly vision—if it had been one—I had once seen in the gallery. Was he the ghost?—sitting there and staring at me with his large eyes, but never speaking? If not a ghost, it must be a living skeleton. My pulses stood still; my heart leaped into my mouth. The figure raised his arm, and pointed peremptorily to the door with his long, lanky, white fingers. A sign that I must quit his presence. I was glad to do so. Startled, terrified, bewildered, I thought no more of Lady Chandos, but went back through the passage, and out at the green-baize door. There, face to face, I encountered Mr. Chandos. I shall not readily forget _his_ face when he looked at me. Never had greater hauteur, rarely greater anger, appeared in the countenance of any living man. "Have you been in _there?_" he demanded. "Yes. I——" More I could not say. The words stuck in my throat. "Listen, Miss Hereford," he said, his lips working with emotion. "I am grieved to be compelled to say anything discourteous to a lady, more especially to you, but I must _forbid_ you to approach these rooms, however powerfully your curiosity may urge you to visit them. I act as the master of Chandos, and demand it as a right. Your business lies at the other end of the gallery; this end is sacred, and must be kept so from intrusion." I stole away with my crimsoned face, with a crimsoned brain, I think, wishing the gallery floor would open and admit me. Hill came out of the closet with wondering eyes; Mr. Chandos went on, and shut the door of the west wing after him. I felt ashamed to sickness. My "curiosity!" But who could it be, he whom I had just seen, thus closeted in the apartments of Lady Chandos? Could it be Sir Thomas, arrived from abroad? But when did he arrive? and why this concealment in his mother's rooms? for concealment it appeared to be. Whoever it was, he was fearfully ill and wasted: of that there could be no doubt; ill, as it seemed to me, almost unto death; and a conviction came over me that Dr. Laken's visits were paid to him, not to Lady Chandos. "My dear child, how flushed and strange you look!" The speaker was Mrs. Penn, interrupting my chain of thought. She was standing at the door of the east wing, came forward, and turned with me into my room. "Anne," she continued, her tone full of kind, gentle compassion, "was Mr. Chandos speaking in that manner to _you?_" "I deserved it," I sighed, "for I really had no right to enter the west wing clandestinely. I went there in search of Lady Chandos. I want to leave, but I cannot go without first seeking her, and I thought I would try to do so, in spite of Hill." "And did you see her?" questioned Mrs. Penn. "No; I could not see her anywhere; I suppose I did not go into all the rooms. But I saw some one else."