Bidding the lodge goodnight, Eliza went on her way. It was quite dark by this time, and although the hour was early she did not much like her lonely walk through the park. She was not used to the country, and the solitude frightened her a little; fancy whispering that a tramp might be lurking behind every tree. She pictured to herself the light and bustle of London streets, and was sorry she had left them. Leaving the carriage-drive to the right when she got within two or three hundred yards of the Hall, she turned into a shrubbery that led to the servants' entrance. It did seem very lonely here, and she hurried on, glancing timidly from right to left, her heart beating a little faster than ordinary. Suddenly a low scream burst from her lips. A dark figure, emerging from behind a clump of evergreens, stood full in her path, and placed its hand on her arm. Eliza stood still; she had no other choice; and trembled as she had never trembled before. It was a woman: she could see that much now. "Won't you please let me speak with you?" cried a gentle voice, which somehow served to reassure Eliza. "My patience!" cried she, anger bubbling up in the reaction of feeling, "how came you to frighten me like that? I was thinking of--of--all kinds of startling things. What do you want?" "You are one of the new maids at the Hall," rejoined the figure, in low, beseeching accents, "and I have been trying for weeks to get to speak to you." "Who are you?--and what do you want with me?" demanded Eliza. "I am Susan Keen." "Susan Keen," repeated the servant, not remembering at the moment why the name should seem familiar to her. "Well, I don't know you, if you are." "My sister lived at the Hall, Miss Winter's maid, and she disappeared in her bedroom one night last winter," went on poor Susan, with a kind of sob. "It was full of mystery. Even Mr. Kettle says that." "Oh yes, to be sure," cordially replied Eliza, her sympathies aroused now. "Poor Katherine Keen! Yes. What _did_ become of her?" Susan shook her head. It was a question no one could answer. "I want you to help me to find out," she whispered. The avowal struck Eliza with a sort of alarm. "Good gracious!" she cried. "I want you to help me to find some traces of her--my poor lost sister," continued Susan--"some clue to the mystery of her fate----" "But what could _I_ do, even if I were willing?" interrupted the housemaid. "You are inside the house, I am outside," replied Susan, with a sob. "Your chances are greater than mine. Oh, won't you help me? At any moment, when least expected, some link might show itself; the merest accident, as mother says, might put us on the right track. Have you no pity for her?" "I've a great deal of pity for her; I never heard so strange and pitiful a tale in all my life," was the reply. "Phemie was told all about it when she went into Nullington. But, you know, she may not be dead."