"Yes, Mrs. Mallet, pray go on; I am very curious to hear what did happen last night." "It makes the cold chills run over me to think of it. We was all gone to bed--leastways the maids and me, and Hann and me was but just got to my room when says she to me, 'Oh la! whatever do you think?' says she; 'I promised Ellen when she went out this afternoon as I would shut the windows in the pink bedroom at four o'clock, and never come to think of it till this minute,' she says. 'Oh dear,' I says, 'and them new chintzes will be entirely ruined with the damp. Why, what a good-for-nothing girl you are!' I says, 'and what you thinks on half your time is more than I can tell.' 'Whatever shall I do?' she says, 'for go along there at this time of night all by myself I dare not,' says she. 'Well,' I says, 'rather than you should go alone, I'll go along with you,' I says, 'for stay here by myself I would not,' I says, 'not if any one was to pay me hundreds.' So we went down our stairs and along our passage to the door which you go into the gallery, Hann a-clutching hold of me and starting, which when we come into the gallery I was all of a tremble, and she shook so I said, 'La! Hann, for goodness' sake do carry that candle straight, or you will grease the carpet shameful;' and come to the pink room I says, 'Open the door.' 'La!' says she, 'what if we was to see the ghost?' 'Hold your silly nonsense this minute,' I says, 'and open the door,' which she do, but stand right back for to let me go first, when, true as ever I am standing here, my lady, I see something white go by like a flash, and struck me cold in the face, and blew the candle out, and then come the fearfullest noise, which thunderclaps is nothing to it. Hann began a-screaming, and we ran as fast as ever we could till we come to the pantry, where Mr. Castleman and the footman was. I thought I should ha' died: died I thought I should. My face was as white as that antimacassar." "How could you see your face, Mrs. Mallet?" somewhat peevishly objected Lady Atherley. But Mrs. Mallet with great dignity retorted-- "Which I looked down my nose, and it were like a corpse's." "Very alarming," said Atherley, "but easily explained. Directly you opened the door there was, of course, a draught from the open window. That draught blew the candle out and knocked something over, probably a screen." "La' bless you, Sir George, it was more like paving-stones than screens a-falling." And indeed Mrs. Mallet was so far right, that when, to settle the weighty question once for all, we adjourned in a body to the pink bedroom, we discovered that nothing less than the ceiling, or at least a portion of it, had fallen, and was lying in a heap of broken plaster upon the floor. However, the moral, as Atherley hastened to observe, was the same. "You see, Mrs. Mallet, this was what made the noise."