"That is a grand victory!" said Amabel, when she had withdrawn. "And not the less that there is really nothing to be afraid of." She took the candle as she spoke and went to look at her mother's picture. "'Tis a lovely face," she observed after a little silence. "I never saw one that pleased me better; but who is it so like?" "Look in the glass and see?" said I, "It is as like you as one pea to another. I wonder whether that is your father's picture next." "It is not my notion of him!" said Amabel, studying the weak handsome face which in all its softness had a certain look of obstinacy often to be seen in such faces. "I wish you had a picture of your own mother, Lucy!" "Thank you, but I do not know that I do!" I replied. "I would rather wait and see how she looks. But Amabel, you will take cold standing about so in your nightgown. We ought to be in bed." Amabel and I had been used all our lives to occupy separate beds, but somehow to-night we thought that the great curtained bedstead looked very large for one, and we agreed to sleep together. Amabel fell asleep directly, but I lay awake a long time listening to the moan of the wind, the rustling and cracking which one always hears among old furniture at night, and the roar of a waterfall which I had noticed before and which I now heard more distinctly in the stillness. I thought over all that had happened in the last few months. I thought of St. Jean lying lonely and forsaken with the bright moonlight shining on the graves and making colored shadows on the floor of the church. I thought too with a shudder of the awful caverns under ground and the dark and dreadful waters which had swallowed up the young heir of Crequi and where I had been so near to losing my own life. I grew restless and nervous and began to fancy that I heard stealthy steps and whispering voices outside the door. At last I made a desperate effort to withdraw my attention from these sounds. I repeated all the Psalms with which I was familiar in French, English, and Latin, and then tried to imagine myself helping Sister Baptista to measure olives—a fancy which soon put me to sleep. [Illustration] CHAPTER XVII. LIFE AT THE HALL. JENNY came to call us betimes in the morning, but we could hardly dress in time for breakfast, so occupied were we in gazing from our projecting window at the great picture spread out before us.