It was a great battle--a great victory. Madame was in high spirits. The air was sweet--the landscape charming--I, so good--everything so beautiful! Where should we go? _this_ way? I had made a resolution to speak as little as possible to Madame, I was so incensed at the treachery I had witnessed; but such resolutions do not last long with very young people, and by the time we had reached the skirts of the wood we were talking pretty much as usual. 'I don't wish to go into the wood, Madame.' 'And for what?' 'Poor mamma is buried there.' 'Is _there_ the vault?' demanded Madame eagerly. I assented. 'My faith, curious reason; you say because poor mamma is buried there you will not approach! Why, cheaile, what would good Monsieur Ruthyn say if he heard such thing? You are surely not so unkain', and I am with you. _Allons_. Let us come--even a little part of the way.' And so I yielded, though still reluctant. There was a grass-grown road, which we easily reached, leading to the sombre building, and we soon arrived before it. Madame de la Rougierre seemed rather curious. She sat down on the little bank opposite, in her most languid pose--her head leaned upon the tips of her fingers. 'How very sad--how solemn!' murmured Madame. 'What noble tomb! How triste, my dear cheaile, your visit 'ere must it be, remembering a so sweet maman. There is new inscription--is it not new?' And so, indeed, it seemed. 'I am fatigue--maybe you will read it aloud to me slowly and solemnly, my dearest Maud?' As I approached, I happened to look, I can't tell why, suddenly, over my shoulder; I was startled, for Madame was grimacing after me with a vile derisive distortion. She pretended to be seized with a fit of coughing. But it would not do: she saw that I had detected her, and she laughed aloud. 'Come here, dear cheaile. I was just reflecting how foolish is all this thing--the tomb--the epitaph. I think I would 'av none--no, no epitaph. We regard them first for the oracle of the dead, and find them after only the folly of the living. So I despise. Do you think your house of Knowl down there is what you call haunt, my dear?' 'Why?' said I, flushing and growing pale again. I felt quite afraid of Madame, and confounded at the suddenness of all this. 'Because Anne Wixted she says there is ghost. How dark is this place! and so many of the Ruthyn family they are buried here--is not so? How high and thick are the trees all round! and nobody comes near.' And Madame rolled her eyes awfully, as if she expected to see something unearthly, and, indeed, looked very like it herself. 'Come away, Madame,' I said, growing frightened, and feeling that if I were once, by any accident, to give way to the panic that was gathering round me, I should instantaneously lose all control of myself. 'Oh, come away! do, Madame--I'm frightened.'