But the heavy shutting of the hall door, and the sound of voices in the hall below, put a sudden period to these fancies, and brought her to her feet with a desperate start and a pang of genuine fear. This was a tangible terror, and as such, Kitty's common sense succumbed to it. With nervous haste, she restored the picture, flew across the room and drew down the window, and made the best of her way back toward the door. But in her haste, her feet became entangled in something, and tripping up, in an instant she lay at full length on the floor. She disengaged her feet from the impediment that had caused her fall; it was a long ribbon, and a locket was attached to it; hastily thrusting them into her bosom, she picked herself up, and sprang toward the door. Steps were already mounting the stairs; a voice she knew too well was already audible; the unused lock grated and creaked cruelly under the nervous hands that struggled with it; but, with the strength of terror, she mastered it at last--locked it, dropped the key in her pocket, slipped through the narrow space between the wall and the wardrobe, with an eager push restored the latter to its place, and before Mrs. Roberts reached the landing, stood, a pallid, trembling, but undetected culprit, among the piles of valuables she had been left to guard. The habitual darkness of that end of the hall, increased by the near approach of twilight, screened her white cheeks from the scrutiny of Mrs. Roberts' searching eyes, and the haste that lady was in to restore the wardrobe to its ancient and uninterrupted order, further favored her escape. But she fully paid the penalty of her crime--she acknowledged, in the dread she felt lest it should be discovered, and the unaccustomed alarm she endured, when on dark nights, her ruthless mistress sent her candleless to bed; and she, with suspended breath and strained ear, would creep past the mysterious chamber to her own little loft above, to lie whole hours awake and trembling. Her fertile imagination had supplied the wanting links in the chain of fact; and the fair-haired Alice, the banished daughter of the house, was her dream of beauty by day and her haunting terror by night. "But Kitty," I exclaimed, breathlessly, "does no one else know of the room? Does no one ever go in it?" "Oh yes! Mrs. Roberts must know of it, for she lived here long before the present Mr. Rutledge was master; she knows all the family secrets, I'll warrant. But neither she nor any one else ever troubles _that_ room, I'm pretty sure. I've watched it close enough, and the wardrobe never has been stirred since that day I did it, six years ago last spring. Hardly any one goes to that end of the hall; the corner rooms are shut up and not used, and Mr. Rutledge's own rooms, and Mrs. Roberts', and this one for visitors, being all on this side of the house, there's very little occasion for anybody to go near the others in the rear." "What was in the locket you picked up?" I asked.