"Look!" she breathed. Marcia followed the direction of her gaze, and turned to stare out of the window at the house opposite. And this is what she saw: The shutter of a window on the top floor had been pushed partly open, and a face looked out,--a face with big, appealing eyes, and a frame of golden, curling hair falling all about it. Straight over at the two in the window it gazed, eager, absorbed, delighted. And then suddenly, as it detected their own interested stare, it withdrew, and the shutter was softly closed. The two girls drew a long breath and gazed at each other. "Janet,--_what_ did I tell you! There _is_ some one else in that house!" cried Marcia. "I guess you're right!" admitted Janet, quieter, but no less excited. "But do you realize who that third person _is_, Marcia Brett? It isn't an old lady; it's some one just about our own age--it's a young _girl_!" CHAPTER III THE GATE OPENS For the two ensuing days, Marcia and Janet, tense with excitement, discussed the most recently discovered inmate of "Benedict's Folly," and watched incessantly for another glimpse of the face behind the shutter. How was it, they constantly demanded of each other, that a girl of fourteen or fifteen had come to be shut up in the dreary old place? Was she a prisoner there? Was she a relative, friend, or servant? Was she free to come and go? To the latter question they unanimously voted "No!" How could she be aught else but a prisoner when she was never seen going in or out, was forced to take her exercise after nightfall in the dark garden, and was kept constantly behind closed shutters? No girl of that age in her right mind could deliberately _choose_ a life like that! "Do you suppose she has always lived there?" queried Marcia, for the twentieth time. And as Janet could answer it no better than herself, she propounded another question: "And why do you suppose she opened the shutter and looked out, seeming so delighted, when I played, and then drew in again so quickly when we noticed her? Is _she_ afraid of being seen, too?" "Evidently," said Janet. "She must be as full of mystery as the rest of them. And yet--I _can't_, somehow, feel that she _is_ like them; she's so sweet and young and--oh, _you_ know what I mean!" Of course she knew, but it didn't help them in the least to solve this latest phase of their mystery. Finally Marcia, who still clung a bit shyly to the fairy lore of her earlier years, declared: "I believe she's a regular _Cinderella_, kept there to do all the hard work of the place by those queer old ladies, and I shouldn't be a bit surprised if she's down in the kitchen this minute, cleaning out the ashes of the stove! Come, Jan, let's go for a walk, and when we come back I'll play on the violin by the window. Maybe our little _Cinderella_ will peep out again!"