Ella saw that they were not satisfied. Leading the way back to Number Nine, she turned the key, opened the door, and went in. The two girls ventured no farther than the threshold. The room contained the ordinary adjuncts of a bed-chamber, and of one apparently in use. Across a chair hung a servant's muslin apron, on the chest of drawers lay a servant's cap, a linen collar, and a lavender neck-ribbon. Simple articles all, yet the two housemaids shuddered when their eyes fell on them. In a little vase on the chimney-piece were a few withered flowers--violets and snowdrops. The oval looking-glass on the dressing-table was festooned with muslin, tied with bows of pink ribbon. But Ella, as she held the candle aloft and gazed round the room, saw something to-night that she had never noticed before. The bows of ribbon had been untied, and the muslin drawn across the face of the glass so as completely to cover it. Ella had been in the room some weeks ago, and she felt sure that the looking-glass was not covered then, It must have been done since; but by whom, and why? That none of the servants would enter the room of their own accord she knew quite well: yet whose fingers, save those of a servant, could have done it? Despite her resolution to be calm, her heart chilled as she asked herself these questions, and her eyes wandered involuntarily to the bed, as though half expecting to see there the dread outlines of a form that was still for ever. The same idea struck the two girls. "Look at that glass!" cried the one to the other, in a half-whisper. "It is covered up as if there had been a death in the room." Ella could bear no more. Motioning the servants from the room, she passed out herself and relocked the door. But this time she took the key with her instead of leaving it in the lock. "You see there is nothing to be afraid of," she said to the girls, as she gave them back the candle at the foot of the stairs. "Do not be so foolish again." But Ella Winter was herself more perplexed and shaken than she allowed to appear, or would have cared to admit. CHAPTER VI. ONE SNOWY NIGHT.