He did all he could. He tried indefatigably, though in vain, to persuade her to let her daughter share the spectacle: and he went, the same day, when Miss Wharton was out for her walk, and the servants were at dinner, to examine the house. He made no discovery. The gratings of the under-ground cellars were perfect. The attics had no trap-doors; and the house had no parapet. The chimneys were too high and narrow for any one to get in at the top. No window or door was ever found unfastened in the morning. Mrs. Wharton did not think she could engage for courage enough to get out of bed, or to look beyond the curtains. Nor could she promise not to draw her curtains. The face had never appeared within them; and they seemed a sort of protection where there was no other. Without having made any promises, she went so far as to start up in bed, the next time she saw the face. The eyes winked horribly at her; the head nodded--and was gone. The beating of her heart prevented her hearing any thing that time; but once or twice during the autumn she fancied she heard a light and swift footstep in the passage. She always left her room-door open, for the sake of the same sort of feeling of security that most people crave when they shut and bolt theirs. If this was a ghost, bolts would not keep it out; and she could fly the more easily through the open door if her terror should become too great to be endured alone. For the first time, she now burned a night-light in her chamber, as the nights lengthened, and not a dim, flickering rush candle, but a steady wax-light. She knew that her daughter wondered at the strange extravagance; but she could not bear darkness, or a very feeble light, when the thing might be behind the curtain. Throughout October the visits were almost nightly. In the first week in November they suddenly ceased, and so many weeks passed away without a return, that Mrs. Wharton began to be a little alarmed about her own wits, and to ask herself whether, after all, it was not possible that this was a trick of the nerves. One night in January, that doubt, at least, was settled; for there, at the same bed-post, was the same face. Mrs. Wharton was now, after this interval, subdued at once. She had borne, for half-a-year, her pastor's suspicions of her digestion and of her wisdom, and now, she really wanted sympathy. She let him tell her daughter (let him, rather than tell it herself, because he could make light of it, and she could not); and she gladly agreed to let her daughter sleep with her. For long, she gained nothing by it. During the whole fortnight that the visits now continued, Miss Wharton never once saw the face. She tried to wake the moment her mother touched her; she tried to keep awake; but she never saw the face: and after that fortnight, it did not come again till April.