"Mrs. Carlyon tells me that you have promised to spend a week or two in London with her a little later on," said Conroy. "Yes, I have," answered Ella. "You will find London deserted, I fear." "So much the better. I never care for a crowd." "Mrs. Carlyon has been so good as to give me a general invitation to call upon her. I hope I shall see you during your stay." All Ella's heart leapt into her face at these words. She turned away her head under the pretence of looking at the others. "It is quite a treat to watch the Vicar play backgammon: he seems to give his whole mind to the game," she said, and then she turned to Conroy again. "You have the fortune to be a great favourite with my aunt, Mr. Conroy," she went on. "I am sure she will be very pleased to see you in town, and--so shall I. If you will look in the canterbury, and find me that piece by Schubert which you said you liked so much when you were here last, I will play it for you again this evening." The piece was played, and then they fell to talking again. Conroy asked Ella whether she really meant to inhabit the Hall during the winter. "Yes; why not?" was the answer. "I love the old place. It is my home, and that means everything." "Very true, Miss Winter--I should think as you do. May I ask," added Conroy, speaking on the impulse of the moment, and without due thought, "whether any light has been thrown on the fate of that missing girl, who--who was so mysteriously lost here?" "None whatever," answered Ella sadly, the gladness dying out of her eyes. "A mystery it is, and a mystery it seems likely to remain. I need scarcely say that it is a great trouble to me. The worst is, the poor sister, Susan, who is not very bright in intellect, is still beset by the hallucination, for I can term it nothing else, that on moonlight nights her sister may sometimes be seen gazing out of her bedroom window; and she comes up to, as she fancies, look at her. Nothing can shake her fixed belief that Katherine, either alive or dead, is still hidden somewhere in the Hall." "It is strange how the girl's mind should have become so thoroughly imbued with such an idea." Ella could not repress a shudder. Might there not, after all, be some foundation for poor Susan's wild fancies? Whose hands had covered up the looking-glass in Katherine's bedroom? Whence had come and whither had vanished that figure which the two housemaids had seen gazing down upon them from the gallery? How account by any reasonable theory for the fright undergone by Mrs. Carlyon? It was a mystery that weighed upon Ella day and night; a burden from which her mind could never entirely free itself. Many people under like circumstances would have shut up the old house and made a home elsewhere, but to Ella it seemed that if the fate of the missing girl were ever to be cleared up it must be cleared up on the spot; and on the spot she determined to remain.