Ismay drank her tea as lazily as usual, and watched her chance to slip away after a while. Last night’s music had been no dream, and Thomas’ face had mystified her. As soon as Cristiane and her mother was settled at a game of Halma for chocolates, she departed unnoticed, and sought Thomas, who was in his pantry. Miss Trelane walked in and closed the door behind her. “Why did you look at me like that in the drawing-room, Thomas?” she asked, with a bluntness very foreign to her. “Why did not you want me to speak of last night?” The old man turned from the decanters he was filling. “Because I won’t have Miss Cristiane made nervous,” he said doggedly. “That’s why, Miss Trelane.” “How could it make her nervous to know I heard a piano in the night? Robbers don’t play on pianos, Thomas.” “It’s not robbers I’m thinking of, and if you’re wise you’ll not mention it again, miss,” he spoke imploringly. “I’ll speak of it now, once for all, then,” she said. “For I know it wasn’t a dream, and you can’t scold me like you did Jessie”--with her lovely smile. “Jessie’s a fool, for all her forty years,” he grumbled, “if she told you that.” “She didn’t, it was Miss Cristiane. Listen, Thomas! Last night I woke up, broad awake, as I never do, and I heard quite plainly some one playing a queer tinkling tune on a piano, somewhere up-stairs. It sounded so uncanny that I sat up to listen, and then I got out of bed and found my door was open into the hall; out there I heard the music plainer still, and it made me feel cold. But I thought I’d go and see who it was.” The old man stood staring at her, his face twitching. “Well, I went up-stairs, in the dark, till I got to a hall I didn’t know, and from a room that opened off it I heard that music as plainly as you hear me now! But the door was shut.” “You didn’t go in? For God’s sake, Miss Trelane, never go in!” His voice, full of horror, startled her. “Why? Who’s there? Who was playing that piano?” “No one”--heavily. “And it’s no piano, but a spinet that belonged to Sir Gaspard’s grandmother. It’s haunted, that’s what it is, and to hear it means trouble to this house. Jessie heard it before the master was killed. But Miss Cristiane knows naught of it, and don’t you tell her.” “It’s mice in the strings,” she said. “Anything else is nonsense.” Yet with a shudder she remembered the thing had played a tune. “If you think it’s haunted, why don’t you break it up?” “Because we can’t. It isn’t healthy in that room,” he stammered. “Before Lady Le Marchant died I was in there with one of the footmen, and we opened the thing and looked all through it. There wasn’t a sign of mice. And when we turned from it, it began to play, first a scale, and then a tune that queer that we couldn’t move. And there in broad daylight a wind went by us that was cold like snow. I’ve never been in there since.” He wiped his forehead that was wet.