She stood gaping as if rendered powerless by fright, and Everell could think of nothing better than to continue perfectly still. Wrapped in his cloak, and with his face turned toward the maid, he did not move even his eyes, but appeared not to be aware of her presence. His thought was that this unlifelike behaviour might cause the rustic wench to take him for an apparition, or a trick of her fancy, the more so as the darkness would give vagueness to his figure. After a few seconds of this silent confrontation, the maid, uttering a faint wail of terror, apparently at the back of her mouth, turned and took to her heels. Everell profited by her flight to leave the garden instantly, and made his best speed for John Tarby’s castle. If the girl told of what she had seen, and brought investigators to the spot, who could find nothing to verify her account, they would doubtless believe she had suffered from a delusion. As she herself, whether she came to their conclusion or not, was likely to avoid the place after dark in future, Everell considered that the garden was not the less safe as a meeting-place for this occurrence. When he met Georgiana the next evening, he expected some allusion by her to the incident, as he supposed the maid servant must have spread the tale through the household. But Georgiana said nothing of the matter. She had indeed heard nothing of it, for the isolation in which she dwelt in the house was copied by her maid, partly in imitation and partly because, with her Southern ideas of propriety, Prudence found herself as much antagonized by the rude Northern servants of the house as by the affected London attendants of the visitors. Thus she spent as much of her time as possible in her mistress’s apartments, big with the secret entrusted to her of the clandestine meetings. Being thus on sniffing terms with her equals in the servants’ hall, and out of their gossip, she remained in ignorance of the kitchen-maid’s adventure. From Georgiana’s silence on the subject, Everell inferred that the occurrence had created no talk in the house; and he did not mention it himself, lest Georgiana, in her scruples as to his safety and her own conduct, might lessen the frequency of their meetings. His periods of longing were sufficiently endless, his tastes of joy sufficiently brief, as they were. But the kitchen-maid’s adventure had not really gone without circulation. “You never told us your house was haunted, Foxwell,” said Lady Strange, meeting her host at the breakfast-table, from which Georgiana had already gone. Mrs. Winter and Rashleigh were yet to appear. “I never knew it—till this moment, at least,” replied Foxwell, stifling a yawn which owed itself, perhaps, to the punch or primero of the previous night. “Though every crumbling old brick-heap like this has its ghost or so, no doubt. But what do you mean?”