After one moment’s blank, shocked silence, a cry of amaze burst from Nina’s lips: “Are you mad, Kitty? Did I not see Mrs. St. Alban there in the door looking at me ten minutes ago?” “You saw her ghost, dear Miss Nina,” said the girl, solemnly, “Mrs. St. Alban is dead and buried long ago, but they do say that bad people can’t rest in their graves, and so I guess that is why her spirit walks at night.” A great tremor ran over Nina at the maid’s dreadful words. Her sweet face grew ashen, she leaned against Kitty for support. “Dead,” she murmured, in a tone of awe and wonder. “How long has it been, Aunt Drusilla?” “About three days after you went away,” the old lady replied, and the wonder in Nina’s eyes grew deeper. “But she was young and well and strong,” she said, “What was it that killed her so suddenly?” Miss Drusilla’s heart gave a great throb of dread. She answered almost against her own will: “She was murdered!” She never forgot Nina’s ghastly white, horrified face, and she hurried on to the end of her story for fear the girl would faint. “Someone went into her room the very night you went away and stabbed her in the breast with a sharp dagger.” “Oh, my God, how horrible!” shivered the girl, “Oh, she was hard, she was cruel and relentless, but she was so beautiful, so weak, who could have had the heart to kill her? Who did it, Aunt Drusilla? Who murdered Mrs. St. Alban?” Miss Drusilla turned away from the appealing look in those dark eyes. She could not speak. “Who was it, Kitty?” said the girl, startled by Miss Strangemore’s emotion, “It was not, oh, no, no, never--it was not my husband?” “No, it was not Mr. Strangemore,” several voices answered her at once. Nina clasped her hands together. “Oh, I am so glad,” she cried. “You all acted so strangely I knew not what to think. But who was it, then, that killed Mrs. St. Alban? Aunt Drusilla, why don’t you speak to me?” Thus adjured Miss Drusilla’s pale lips parted stiffly, and she answered, desperately. “I don’t know what to say to you, Nina!” “Was there ever such a strange answer given to anyone,” Nina asked herself in wonder, and she looked back at her maid. “And you, Kitty,” she said, “Are you dumb, too, because you know not what to say to me? Can’t you tell me who killed Mrs. St. Alban?” “Miss Nina, darling, I don’t know who killed her!” the maid responded, doggedly. The answer was simple enough but Nina’s strained, alert senses detected something beyond it. “You are keeping something back from me, all of you,” she said, looking round upon their white, scared faces. “Lucy,” she added, turning around to the chambermaid, who was regarding her through a swift rain of quick tears, “why are you crying, child?” “About you, Mrs. Strangemore,” sobbed the girl, “because--because--that bad, wicked woman said before she died that it was--was _you_ that had killed her!”