It never occurred to her that the great white house, seen to peculiar advantage from their present point of view, as it rose among the trees, its many latticed windows glistening in the sunshine--a sort of fairy dignity brooding over all--could be the Maryons' home. For though she felt that she had been, it seemed to her, inexcusably misled by Winifred as to her family's social position and means, she could not all at once have realised how "very pleasant" were the material places in which their lines were laid. Again Louise smiled, but this time with a surprised and almost reproachful glance of interrogation at her sister. "Has not Winifred told you about our dear old home?" she said. "We think there is nothing like it in the world. Winifred, have you never described it to Miss Norreys?" "We have always had so many other things to talk of," said Winifred, indifferently. "Besides, I am not good at description." Hertha felt too provoked to look at her. "You are right," she said warmly to Louise, "I am sure there cannot be another place like it. There is something dreamy about it, too, even in this brilliant sunshine." "You feel that?" said the girl eagerly. "I am so glad. Yes, there is a very peculiar charm about it. I think it must be that it is so little changed from what it must have been hundreds of years ago. It is so easy in one's fancy to re-people it with those who used to live in it and love it as we do now. Celia makes up all sorts of stories, based on the real history and legends of the place. Sometimes," with a little laugh, "she really frightens herself, for we _have_ a ghost. We call her the--" "Louise," said Winifred, "I just won't have you tell Miss Norreys that idiotic old story. I wish all ghost stories and nonsense of the kind were forbidden by Act of Parliament." "We should be in many ways the losers if it were so," said Hertha, quietly. She could not understand Winifred, for there was evident earnestness under her half-laughing tone. "What a strange, inconsistent girl she is!" thought the elder woman. "She looks and seems honesty itself, it is _the_ thing that attracted me to her; and yet _how_ she has deceived, or at least misled me, and through me, Mr Montague and others. I feel hot when I think of it! Still she does not feel ashamed, and she must have known I should be undeceived as soon as I came here. And now this about ghosts? Is it possible she is really afraid of that sort of thing, and that it makes her dislike her home? She certainly does not look as if she had ever had a fright." Her silence during these cogitations had reacted on her companions, and for a few minutes neither spoke. Then Winifred turned abruptly to Louise. "Who is with you?" she said, "or who is coming? Lennox, of course, and any friends of his?"