And then her thoughts went out after her own mother, with a longing desire such as she had seldom felt. Where was she that wintry night? Was she far from or was she near to the daughter who had never seen her face to remember it? Was she living still, or was the snow piled upon her grave, and would not Magdalen rather have her thus than like the babbling maniac who had startled her so in the parlor? She believed she would. In one sense Alice was more to be pitied than herself, and she sat thinking of the young girl and the shadow on her life until the fire burned out upon the hearth, and she crept shivering to bed. But not to sleep. She could not do that for the peculiar cry, half human, half unearthly, which from time to time kept coming to her ears, and in which she recognized tones like the voice heard an instant in the parlor before consciousness forsook her. There was evidently a great commotion throughout the house, the servants running to and fro; but no one came near her until the early dawn was stealing into the room, and giving definite shapes and forms to the objects about her. Then there was a tap at her door, and Honora’s voice said: “Miss Lennox, will you come with me and see what you can do to quiet her? She’s kept screeching for you all night, and Mrs. Jenks, who is in her senses now, says maybe you can influence her. Strangers sometimes do. I’ll wait outside till you are ready. You needn’t be afraid,—she never hurt any body.” Magdalen trembled in every joint, and her teeth fairly chattered as she hastened to dress herself. “It’s because I’m cold; there certainly is nothing to fear,” she thought, as she bound her hair under a net and knotted her dressing-gown around her waist. She had never been through the baize door, and as Honora held it for her to pass she felt for a moment as if trespassing upon forbidden ground. But the door swung to behind her. She was shut into a narrow hall, with two doors on the right hand side, and one of them ajar. The mystery she was going to confront was beyond that door, she knew, for a moaning cry of “Let me go to her, I tell you,” met her ear, and made her draw a little closer to Honora, who said to her, reassuringly, “There is nothing to fear; she is perfectly harmless.” “Yes; but tell me, please, who it is,” Magdalen said, clutching the arm of the girl, who replied: “Oh, I supposed you knew. It is _Mrs. Grey_.” Magdalen’s conjectures were correct, and she went fearlessly up to the door, which Honora opened wide and then shut behind her, leaving her standing just across the threshold in the room which held the Mystery at Beechwood. CHAPTER XXXIX. MAGDALEN AND THE MYSTERY.