At the top of the stair, Joan turned into a room, and keeping along the wall, went cautiously to the window, and listened. “I don’t think he will venture here,” she panted. “The gardener tells me his lordship seems as much afraid of the place as he and the rest of them. I don’t mind it much--in the daytime.--You are never frightened, Cosmo!” As she spoke, she turned on him a face which, for all the speed she had made, was yet pale as that of a ghost. “I don’t pretend never to be frightened,” said Cosmo; “all I can say is, I hope God will help me not to turn my back on anything, however frightened I may be.” But the room he was in seemed to him the most fearful place he had ever beheld. His memory of the spare room at home, with all its age and worn stateliness and evil report, showed mere innocence beside this small common-looking, square room. If a room dead and buried for years, then dug up again, be imaginable, that is what this was like. It was furnished like a little drawing-room, and many of the niceties of work and ornament that are only to be seen in a lady’s room, were yet recognizable here and there, for everything in it was plainly as it had been left by the person who last occupied it. But the aspect of the whole was indescribably awful. The rottenness and dust and displacement by mere decay, looked enough to scare even the ghosts, if they had any scare left in them. No doubt the rats had at one time their share in the destruction, but it was long since they had forsaken the house. There was no disorder. The only thing that looked as if the room had been abandoned in haste, was the door of a closet standing wide open. The house had a worse repute than ghost could give it--worse than Joan knew, for no one had ever told her what must add to her father’s discredit. Something in a corner of the closet just mentioned, caught Cosmo’s eye, and he had taken one step towards it, when a sharp moan from the lips of his companion arrested him. He turned, saw her face agonized with fresh fear, and was rushing to the window, when she ran _at_ him, pushed him back, and stood shaking. He thought she would have fallen, and supported her. They stood listening speechless, with faces like two moons in the daytime. Presently Cosmo heard the rustling of twigs, and the sounds of back-swinging branches. These noises came nearer and nearer. Joan gazed with expanding eyes of terror in Cosmo’s face, as if anywhere else she must see what would kill her. “Joan!” cried the same voice Cosmo had heard in the garden. She shook, and held so to Cosmo’s arm that she left as sure marks of her fingers there as ever did ghost. The sympathy of her fear invaded him. He would have darted to meet the enemy, but she would not let him go. The shudder of a new resolve passed through her, and she began to pull him towards the closet. Involuntarily for a moment he resisted, for he feared the worse risk to her; but her action and look were imperative, and he yielded.