“And you, Kitty,” said Miss Drusilla, looking over the top of Nina’s head, and feeling compelled to scold somebody to check her rushing tears, “aren’t you ashamed of yourself, shrieking out, and raising a regular hullabaloo at the sight of your young mistress? Didn’t you have sense enough to know that she was not a ghost?” “Why yes, ma’am, of course. It wasn’t Miss Nina that frightened me--no, not if it _had_ been her ghost instead of her dear blessed self. It was the other one that made me scream,” Kitty answered. “The other one?” Miss Strangemore interrogated, with an air of mystification. “Mrs. St. Alban, ma’am,” explained Kitty. “Lord-a-mercy!” “Um-me, tother one, too!” “_She_ walks!” “I leaves this haunted house to-morrow!” These disjointed exclamations from the servants followed pell mell upon Kitty’s words. The women huddled together with frightened faces, gazing half terrified at Nina, as if her ghostliness and the other’s combined, were too much for weak human endurance. “Kitty, you are crazy.” Miss Strangemore said, shortly. “Very well, ma’am, you may doubt my word if you like, but ask Miss Nina here what made me scream.” Nina lifted her pale, weary looking face from her aunt’s shoulder. “We were in here alone, Kitty and I,” she said, simply. “She had just been telling me that----that Mr. Strangemore had gone abroad again, when the door into the hall there suddenly opened wide. We both looked up, and we saw that woman----I mean Sibyl St. Alban----standing in the door, clad in a soft, loose white dress, with her hair hanging down over her shoulders. When she saw us looking at her she turned around and fled from us.” A renewed chorus of groans and whispers greeted Nina’s words. Even Miss Drusilla looked pale and troubled. She gazed blankly into Nina’s face. “Are you quite sure, my love, that it was Mrs. St. Alban?” she asked. “I am perfectly certain of it,” was the confident reply, and then the girl burst out, reproachfully, “Oh, Aunt Drusilla, I did not think you could have tolerated that woman here so long! Why is she here still? It cannot be that Talbot has already married her and made her the mistress of my home?” They gazed at her blankly, what wild words was she saying? “Nina, where have you been all this time?” her aunt asked, with seeming irrelevance. “I have been in Baltimore!” “So near, and not know all that has happened at Selwyn Heights since you went away? Are you jesting with me, child?” “No, I am telling you the truth, dear Aunt Drusilla. I have been very ill for months. I know nothing, I have heard nothing, I have not read a newspaper since I went away. What has happened? Tell me, Aunt Drusilla,” said the girl, with innocent unconsciousness. Miss Drusilla groaned, and did not answer. Nina looked at Kitty. “Has anything bad happened? Tell me the truth,” she said. Kitty answered, agitatedly: “Mrs. St. Alban is dead, Miss Nina!” * * * * *