Mrs. Mills looked keenly at her from the other side of the table. She seemed to examine the girl’s pale face with questioning eyes. She came in every morning while they were at breakfast, for orders, she said, but there were never any orders to give her. She suggested what there was to be for dinner, if the ladies pleased; and the ladies generally did please, though Miss Hofland, to show her independence, would make an alteration now and then. “It’s cheerful to hear the clocks when one can’t sleep,” said Mrs. Mills, as if it were possible that she could have heard Rhoda’s question. “And in this quiet place there is nothing else to hear, unless one was to believe the stories of the ghosts about the place, and there’s not much sense in them.” “I beg you won’t speak of anything of the kind before Miss Rhoda!” cried the governess, sharply. “And you, Hetty, you’re trembling, you silly child!” “N--no, Miss Hofland,” Hetty said; but her head was racked with pain, and she scarcely knew what she said. Was it a ghost she had seen, a disembodied soul? She had not been so entirely without sleep as she thought, but had dozed and woke again, always in a fever of alarm and misery, recalling to herself the long muffled figure, the slow, soft, noiseless movements, the winding out and in of the flower beds where the yellow and brown heads of the chrysanthemums drooped in the frost. It seemed to stand before her now as Mrs. Mills stood--though very unlike Mrs. Mills--a long thin figure, wrapped from head to foot in some clinging garment. “If I speak it is in a joke,” said Mrs. Mills; “you don’t think I believe in anything of the sort?” “I don’t admire that kind of joking,” Miss Hofland said. “Rhoda, come, if you have finished your breakfast it is quite time to begin lessons. I think we are a little late to-day.”