“But, mother, Janet hasn’t looked once. She hates this mystery prowl, as she calls it, as much as I do,” emphasized Nathalie, “and I have hard work making her write in her diary. She is busy writing a speech on suffrage, which she expects to deliver this fall. Just imagine, mother, Janet making a speech,” and Nathalie smiled at the thought. Later in the day, dust-begrimed and with her hair all of a frowse, Nathalie came trudging wearily up the staircase. She had been searching for two hours in the library, a great dark room, lined with bookcases, and whose wainscoted walls were hung with family portraits,—Nathalie called them the Renwicks’ Honor Roll,—interspersed with medallions of great authors and musicians, and valuable etchings. The girl had laughed at Cynthia for prowling about, but as she threw herself on her bed, tired and aching from stretching her arms and climbing step-ladders, in order to peer behind the pictures and cornices, she felt that she would never laugh at her again. For the more she had searched, the more her interest had increased, and with it the conclusion that her aunt, for contrariness, had _really hidden_ something of great value, in order to try the patience of the searchers, in some eerie corner or nook. But was Mrs. Renwick really dead? This was a question that assailed the girl whenever she passed the mystery room, whose door loomed big and dark, with its heavy crimson curtain, in the long hall. Somehow, she had confessed to Janet, whenever she hurried by that door she had a strange feeling, a feeling of nearness to some one,—the way one would feel, she imagined, if they looked up suddenly and found some one watching them with a strange, fixed stare. Could it be that some one was hidden in that room? But she always dismissed the thought with a half-laugh, as being very silly. Nevertheless she always raced by that door, especially at night, when the hall was wrapped in an uncanny gloominess from the dark shadows that came from the big grandfather’s clock, the heavy, black-looking wardrobe at one end, and other ponderous and carved pieces of mahogany resting against the wall. The following afternoon Nathalie set forth to return the umbrella to its owners, laden with a basket of fruit, in appreciation of their kindness to her. As she walked cheerily along, a sudden thought loomed big in her mind; she had been thinking how she was going to live up to her watchword, “Liberty and humanity—our best,” when it had occurred to her that one way would be to offer to read to Miss Whipple every day. The girl’s eyes glowed, and then she wavered. “Oh, no, I don’t see how I can do _that_, for I have so much to do at home, and I do not want to miss my walks.” Her face clouded as she silently struggled with herself, divided with the desire to cheer her new friend, and yet not to have to forego her walks.