She had not been there five minutes before the door-handle was turned sharply. “Ismay, open the door at once! You can’t be in bed,” cried her mother, from the corridor, with the assurance of a person who finds a door unexpectedly locked. “Yes, I am!” with childlike surprise. “What’s the matter? I don’t want to get up again.” “Let me in at once,” giving the door a cross jerk. “Delighted!” she crossed the floor with swift bare feet, and turned the key. “What on earth did you lock your door for?” Mrs. Trelane banged it, too, behind her as she swept in, her gauzy, glittering gown, that was fit for the stage, trailing behind her. “And you’ll never keep your looks if you’re going to get into bed like a plowboy, without even washing your face.” “It’s quite clean. I never use powder,” was the retort. “Pray don’t be clever. I’m dead tired.” Mrs. Trelane dropped into the most comfortable chair in the room. “I can’t appreciate it. I suppose you locked your door because you’re annoyed with me for bringing Marcus here?” Ismay, sitting on the edge of her bed, white and exquisite, rubbed one foot with the shell-pink heel of the other; and looked ashamed, as one who is about to disgrace herself by a chicken-hearted confession. “I always lock my door in this house at night,” looking at her feet. “I’m--afraid!” “Afraid? What on earth of?” “Nothing--on earth,” whispering. “But haven’t you heard anything funny since you came here?” “Nothing so funny as this!” contemptuously. “Do talk sensibly. I came to say something. Do you suppose I came back to this dull hole for fun?” “I am talking sensibly.” For the first time Ismay looked up, and her gaze would have made the fortune of a tragedienne. Deep, earnest, magnetic, her eyes caught and held her mother’s. “Do you mean to tell me you don’t know about the things there is in this house?” she demanded. “The thing that moves softly at night, up and down the stairs, that you can hear if you stand in the corridor--coming closer, closer every minute, till it passes you with a cold like snow in your face, and you can’t move for fright----” She was moving her hands in a strange waving motion to and fro, and a strange uneasiness caught at Helen Trelane’s wretched soul, even while she gave a scoffing laugh. “The thing that is very old and evil, and means no good to any in the house. Because, if you don’t know, ask Thomas! You saw how frightened he was the day I told before him my dream about the music at night,” with a return to her practical manner that was somehow more impressive than her mother liked. “What has your dream of a piano being played in the night got to do with servants’ stories about ghosts?” Yet Mrs. Trelane could not help glancing at the shut door. With Marcus in the house, with the world against her on every side, it would be too awful to get nervous terrors on her brain.