"But, Kitty," I exclaimed eagerly, my curiosity thoroughly excited, "what makes you think she isn't dead?" "Oh! that much I know, that she didn't die then, and that she didn't die at home in this house, and isn't buried there below in the churchyard by the others; and I know she was away when old Mr. Rutledge died; because once father said it was an awful thing, when he lay so ill, and out of his head, to hear him call upon her to come home. All that night before he died, he would call 'Alice! Alice!' till you could hear it all over the house. And father says," continued the girl, in a still lower tone, "that sometimes of wild dark nights, when he's coming past the house late from his work, he could swear for all the world that he hears the old man still calling 'Alice! Alice!' till it makes his blood freeze to listen to it. And then, when I say 'Where was she, father, all the time, and why didn't she come to him?' he always says, 'that's not for the like of you to hear about; it's none of your business, child, nor mine,' and sends me off about something else." "But, Kitty," I persisted, "is that all you know of her? Tell me all you've ever heard; was she pretty?" "Oh, so pretty! You can't think how white her skin was, and her eyes like violets, so large and blue, and curls all over her head--loose, shiny curls." "How do you know," I said quickly; "surely you never saw her, did you?" Kitty blushed and stammered, and said, "No, not exactly; but there was something she had seen she'd never told anybody about; she didn't know whether she ought to;" but the result was, she at last imparted to me the following: When Kitty was about twelve years old, it appeared, from her account, the demon of curiosity was stronger in her even than it was now, and her keen young eyes had detected long before that time, what had escaped many maturer observers, viz., that at the end of the upper hall there was a room, that was ignored in all descriptions of the house, and might well, indeed, have been overlooked. A huge wardrobe stood in the middle of the space between the corner room on the east, and the corner room on the west, of the hall; and none but a very inquiring mind like Kitty's would have investigated the exact dimensions of these rooms, whether they met and were separated but by a partition, or whether a distinct room, the width of the hall, and corresponding to Mr. Rutledge's dressing-room at the opposite end, existed between them. Kitty crept down on the lawn and looked up on the outside, and discovered a large window, the shutters of which were closed and dusty; and on exploring the corner rooms, they corroborated her suspicions--they did not extend across the hall. Behind that wardrobe, Kitty knew, then, existed a door; and night and day the insane desire to penetrate beyond it, haunted the child.