I wonder whether anything in this world happens by chance? In the days and years that have gone by since, I sometimes ask myself whether _that_ did: that I should be at that particular moment in Featherston's surgery. Squire Todhetley was staying with Sir John Whitney for partridge shooting. He had taken me with him, Tod being in Gloucestershire; and on this Friday afternoon I had run in to say "How-d'ye-do" to Featherston. "_Sainteville!_" repeated he, quite unable to collect his senses. "Why, I must cross the water to get _there_!" I laughed. "Did you think Sainteville would cross to you, sir?" "Bless me! just listen to this," he went on, reading parts of the letter aloud for my benefit. "'It is a dreadful story, George; I dare not enter into details here. But I may tell you this much: that she is dying of fright as much as of fever--or whatever it may be that ails her physically. I am sure it is not consumption, though some of the people here think it is. It is fright and superstition. She lives in the belief that the house is haunted: that Lavinia's ghost walks in it.'" "Now what on earth can Mary mean by that?" demanded the doctor, looking off to ask me. "Ann Preen's wits must have left her. And Mary's too, to repeat so nonsensical a thing." Turning to the next page of the letter, Featherston read on. "'To see her dying by inches before my eyes, and not make any attempt to, save her is what I cannot reconcile myself to, George. I should have it on my conscience afterwards. I think there is this one chance for her: that you, who have attended her before and must know her constitution, would see her now. You might be able to suggest some remedy or mode of treatment which would restore her. It might even be that the sight of a home face, of her old home doctor, would do for her what the strange doctors here cannot do. No one knows better than you how marvellously in illness the mind influences the body.' "True enough," broke off Featherston. "But it seems to me there must be something mysterious about the sickness." He read on again. "'Stella, who is here, was the first to suggest your seeing her, but it was already exercising my thoughts. Do come, George! the sooner the better. I and Jules will be delighted to have you with us.'" Featherston slowly folded up the letter. "What do you think of all this, Johnny Ludlow? Curious, is it not?" "Very. Especially that hint about the house being haunted by the dead-and-gone Miss Preen." "I have never heard clearly what it was Lavinia Preen died of," observed Featherston, leaving, doctor-like, the supernatural for the practical. "Except that she was seized with some sort of illness one day and died the next." "But that's no reason why her ghost should walk. Is it?" "Nancy's imagination," spoke Featherston slightingly. "She was always foolish and fanciful." "Shall you go to Sainteville, Mr. Featherston?" He gave his head a slow, dubious shake, but did not speak.